WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 

LIBRARY OF 

CHOICE READING. 

Itj - 

INDICATOR. 



THE 



INDICATOR: 



A MISCELLANY FOR THE FIELDS AND 
THE FIRESIDE. 



. BY LEIGH HUNT. 



a 



IN TWO PARTS. 
PART I. 



FIRST AMERICAN EDITION 



NEW YORK : 
WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY 



■ 



1845. 



YK f$i 



<* 






Stereotyped by T. B. SMITH, 
216 William Street. 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 



The Indicator, a series of papers originally published in 
weekly numbers, having been long out of print, and repeated 
calls having been made for it among the booksellers, the 
author has here made a selection, comprising the greater- 
portion of the articles, and omitting such only as he unwil- 
lingly put forth in the hurry of periodical publication, or as 
seemed otherwise unsuited for present publication, either 
by the nature of their disquisitions, or from containing com- 
mendatory criticisms now rendered superfluous by the re- 
putation of the works criticised. 

The author has little further to say, by way of adver- 
tisement to these pages, except that both the works were 
written with the same view of inculcating a love of nature 
and imagination, and of furnishing a sample of the enjoy- 
ment which they afford ; and he cannot give a better proof 
of that enjoyment, as far as he was capable of it, than by 
stating, that both were written during times of great trou- 
ble with him, and both helped him to see much of that fair 
play between his own anxieties and his natural cheerfulness, 
of which an indestructible belief in the good and the beau- 
tiful has rendered him perhaps not undeserving. 

London, Dec. 6, 1833. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. I. 

II. 
III. 



IV. 

V. 
VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

-XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV 



PAOB 

Author's Introduction iii 

Difficulty of finding a Name for a Work of 

this kind .1 

A Word on Translation from the Poets . 4 

Autumnal Commencement of Fires — Mantel- 
Pieces — Apartments for Study ... 5 

Acontius's Apple 9 

Godiva . . 11 

Pleasant Memories connected with various 

Parts of the Metropolis . . . . 15 

Advice to the Melancholy 23 

Charles Brandon, and Mary Queen of France 26 
On the Household Gods of the Ancients . 20 

Social Genealogy .34 

Angling * 38 

Ludicrous Exaggerations . . . .43 

Gilbert ! Gilbert ! 48 

Fatal Mistake of Nervous Disorders for Mad- 
ness . 50 

Mists and Fogs 55 

The Shoemaker of Veyros . . . . . 60 

More News of Ulysses 65 

Far Countries 70 

A Tale for a Chimney Corner ... 76 

Thieves, Ancient and Modern . . . .85 
A few Thoughts on Sleep ..... 116 
The Fair Revenge ...,.%..• 122 
Spirit of the Ancient Mythology \ . . 128 
Getting up on Cold Mornings .... 134 
The Old Gentleman 138 



IV 



CONTENTS. 

Dolphins 143 

Ronald of the Perfect Hand . 145 

A Chapter on Hats .... . 156 

SeaVen on Shore 164 

On the Realities of Imagination . .171 

Deaths of Little Children 182 

Poetical Anomalies of Shape . . 186 

Spring and Daisies 189 

May-Day . 197 

Shakspeare's Birth-Day .... 207 

La Belle Dame sans Mercy . . . . 211 

Of, Sticks 214 

Of the* Sight of Shops 222 

A nearer View of some of the Shops . 230 



XXVIL 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

^-XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

-XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 



THE INDICATOR. 



There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem 
to belong to the interior of Fairy-land ; but they have been well authenti- 
cated. It indicates to honey-hunters, where the nests of wild bees are to be 
found. It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer ; and on find- 
ing itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the 
honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little 
distance, where he observes all that passes ; and the hunters, when they have 
helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. — This 
is the CucuLtrs Indicator of Linnaeus, otherwise called the Moroe, Bee 
Cuckoo, or Honey Bird. 

There he arriving, round about doth flie, 

And takes survey with busie, curious eye : 

Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly. — Spencer. 



CHAPTER I. 

Difficulty of finding a Name for a Work of this Kind. 

Never did gossips, when assembled to determine the name of a 
new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, 
experience a difficulty half so great as that which an author 
undergoes in settling the title for a periodical work. In the 
former case, there is generally some paramount uncle, or prodi- 
gious third cousin, who is understood to have the chief claims, 
and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation 
and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the 
brain have no godfather at hand : and yet their single appella- 
tion is bound to comprise as many public interests as all the 
Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be 
modest : it is to be expressive : it is to be new : it is to be strik- 
ing : it is to have something in it equally intelligible to the man 
2 



THE INDICATOR. [chap, i 



of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagina- 
tion : — in a word, it is to be impossible. 

How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy 
nonentity we leave others to judge. There is one good thing 
however which the hunt after a title is sure to realize ; — a great 
deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other 
night, who can do anything for a book but give it a title ; and 
after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the 
present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a 
chair-shaking merriment which he himself might have joined in, 
fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that ex- 
quisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare : — 

One rubbed his elbow, thus ; and fleered, and swore, 

A better speech was never spoke before : 

Another, with his finger and his thumb, 

Cried " Via ! we will do 't, come what will come !" 

The third he capered, and cried, " All goes well !" 

The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell 

With that they all did tumble on the ground, 

With such a zealous laughter, so profound, 

That in this spleen ridiculous, appears, 

To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears. 

Love's Labor 's Lost. 

Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as 
the Adviser, or Helps for Composing ; — the Cheap Reflector, or 
Every Man His Own Looking-Glass ; — the Retailer, or Every 
Man His Own Other Man's Wit ; — Nonsense, to be continued. 
Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the 
Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion ; — Chaos, or the Agreeable 
Miscellany ; — the Fugitive Guide ; — the Foot Soldier, or Flow- 
ers of Wit ; — Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor ; — the Polite 
Repository of Abuse ; — Blood, being a Collection of Light Es- 
says. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the 
Pleasing Ancestor ; the Silent Companion ; the Tart ; the Leg 
of Beef, by a Layman ; the Ingenious Hatband ; the Boots of 
Bliss ; the Occasional Dinner ; the Tooth-ache ; Recollections 
of a Very Unpleasant Nature ; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of 
Snuffers ; Thoughts on a Barouche-box ; Thoughts on a Hill of 
Considerable Eminence ', Meditations on a Pleasing Idea ; Mate 



chap, i.] DIFFICULTY OF NAMING A WORK OF THIS KIND. 3 

rials for Drinking ; the Knocker, No. I. • — the Hippopotamus 
entered at Stationers' Hall ; the Piano-forte of Paulus iEmilius ; 
the Seven Sleepers at Cards ; the Arabian Nights on Horse- 
back : — with an infinite number of other mortal murders of 
common sense, which rose to "push us from our stools/ 5 and 
which none but the wise or good-natured would think of en- 
joying. 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. ii. 



CHAPTER II. 

A Word on Translation from the Poets. 

Intelligent men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theo- 
critus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have 
often wondered how those writers obtained their glory. And 
they well might. The translations are no more like the original 
than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same 
with the versions of Euripides, of iEschylus, of Sophocles, of 
Petrarch, of Boileau, &c, &c, and in many respects of Homer. 
Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete 
specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than 
by selecting a well-known passage from Shakspeare, and turn- 
ing it into the common-place kind of poetry that flourished so 
widely among us till of late years. Take the passage, for 
instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat them- 
selves on a bank by moonlight : — - 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
Here will we sit, and let the sound of music 
Creep in our ears : soft stillness, and the night, 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 

Now a foreign translator of the ordinary kind, would dilute 
and take all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, in 
a style somewhat like the following : — 

With what a charm, the moon, serene and bright, 
Lends on the bank its soft reflected light ! 
Sit we, I pray ; and let us sweetly hear 
The strains melodious with a raptured ear ; 
For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour, 
To \ irmony impart divinest power. 



chap, in.] AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES. 



CHAPTER III. 

Autumnal Commencement of Fires — Mantel-Pieces — Apartments for Study. 

How pleasant it is to have fires again ! We have not time to 
regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the 
necessity of a new kind of warmth ;— a warmth not so fine 
as sunshine, but, as matters go, more sociable. The English 
get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer- 
shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought ; our cli- 
mate seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, 
when it really becomes so : but for the same reason we make as 
much of our winter, as the anti-social habits that have grown 
upon us from other causes will allow. And for a similar reason, 
the southern European is unprepared for a cold day. The 
houses in many parts of Italy are summer-houses, unprepared for 
winter ; so that when a fit of cold weather comes, the dismayed 
inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a little brazier in 
his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and per- 
plexity. ' A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of everything 
out of doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses 
drip like rain, would admonish him to get warm in good earnest. 
If " the web of our life " is always to be " of a mingled yarn/' 
a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture. 
Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books 
on each side. What shall we do 1 Shall we take out a Life of 
somebody, or a Theocritus, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Mon- 
taigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Moliere, or Shakspeare, who 
includes them all ? Or shall we read an engraving from Pous- 
sin or Raphael ? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our 
wrists upon our knees, and toasting the up-turned palms of our 
hands, while we discourse of manners and of man's heart and 
hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and good-r ature ; 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. hi. 



that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-inten- 
tioned, and the good-natured ? 

Ah — take care. You see what that old-looking saucer is, 
with a handle to it ? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, 
which may have been worth to an Athenian, about two-pence ; 
but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could 
— deny for it. And yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his 
imagination more than ever it fetched potter or penny-maker. 
Its little shallow circle overflows for him with the milk and 
honey of a thousand pleasant associations. This is one of the 
uses of having mantel-pieces. You may often see on no very 
rich mantel- piece a representative body of all the elements phy- 
sical and intellectual — a shell for the sea, a stuffed bird or some 
feathers for the air, a curious piece of mineral for the earth, a 
glass of water with some flowers in it for the visible process of 
creation, — a cast from sculpture for the mind of man; — and 
underneath all is the bright and ever-springing fire, running up 
through them heavenwards, like hope through materiality. We 
like to have a little curiosity of the mantei-piece kind within our 
reach and inspection. For the same reason we like a small 
study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like 
to feel them about us ; — to be in the arms of our mistress Philo- 
sophy, rather than see her at a distance. To have a huge 
apartment for a study is like lying in the great bed at Ware, or 
being snug on a mile-stone upon Hounslow Heath. It is space 
and physical activity, not repose and concentration. It is fit 
only for grandeur and ostentation, — for those who have secre- 
taries, and are to be approached like gods in a temple. The 
Archbishop of Toledo, no doubt, wrote his homilies in a room 
ninety feet long. The Marquis Marialva must have been 
approached by Gil Bias through whole ranks of glittering au- 
thors, standing at due distance. But Ariosto, whose mind could 
fly out of its nest over all nature, wrote over the house he built, 
" parva, sed apta mihi" — small, but suited to me. However, it 
is to be observed that he could not afford a larger. He was a 
Duodenarian in that respect, like ourselves. We do not know 
how our ideas of a study might expand with our walls, Mon- 
taigne, who was Montaigne " of that ilk " and lord of a great cha- 



chap, in.] AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES. 7 

teau, had a study u sixteen paces in diameter, with three noble and 
free prospects." He congratulates himself, at the same time, on 
its circular figure, evidently from a feeling allied to the one in 
favor :f smallness. " The figure of my study," says he, " is 
round, and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up 
by my table and my chairs • so that the remaining parts of the 
circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon 
five degrees of shelves round about me." (Cotton's Montaigne, 
b. 3, ch. 3.) 

A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, 
upon the same reasoning as before ; but we like to have some 
green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as 
much as possible in the country, when we are not there. Milton 
expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to 
our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen, thus 
letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination 
of them. 

And let my lamp at midnight hour 
Be seen in some high lonely tower, 
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear 
With thrice-great Hermes ; or unsphere 
The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
What world or what vast regions hold 
The immortal mind, that hath forsook 
Her mansion in this fleshly nook. 

There is a fine passionate burst of enthusiasm on the subject 
of a study, in Fletcher's play of the Elder Brother, Act i., 
Scene 2. 

Sordid and dunghill minds, composed of earth, 

In that gross element fix all their happiness : 

But purer spirits, purged and refined, 

Shake off that clog of human frailty. Give me 

Leave to enjoy myself. That place, that does 

Contain my books, the best companions, is 

To me a glorious court, where hourly I 

Converse with the old sages and philosophers ; 

And sometimes for variety I confer 

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. 



Calling their victories, if unjustly got, 

Unto a strict account ; and in my fancy, 

Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then 

Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace 

Uncertain vanities ? No, be it your care 

To augment a heap of wealth : it shall be mine 

To increase in knowledge. Lights there, for my study. 



chap, iv.] ACONTIUS'S APPLE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Acontius's Apple. 

Acontius was a youth of the island of Cea (now Zia), who, at 
the sacrifices in honor of Diana, fell in love with the beautiful 
virgin, Cydippe. Unfortunately she was so much above him in 
rank, that he had no hope of obtaining her hand in the usual 
way ; but the wit of a lover helped him to an expedient. There 
was a law in Cea, that any oath, pronounced in the temple of 
Diana, was irrevocably binding. Acontius got an apple, and 
writing some words upon it, pitched it into Cydippe's bosom. 
The words were these : 

MA THN APTEMIN AKONTK2 TAMOYMAI. 

By Dian, I will marry Acontius. 

Or, as a poet has written them : 

Juro tibi sanctae per mystica sacra Dianae, 

Me tibi venturam comitem, sponsamque futuram. 

I swear by holy Dian, I will be 

Thy bride betrothed, and bear thee company. 

Cydippe read, and married herself. It is said that she was 
repeatedly on the eve of being married to another person ; but 
her imagination, in the shape of the Goddess, as often threw her 
into a fever ; and the lover, whose ardor and ingenuity had made 
an impression upon her, was made happy. Aristsenetus, in his 
Epistles, calls the apple kvSwviov po\ov, a Cretan apple, which is 
supposed to mean a quince ; or as others think, an orange, or a 
citron. But the apple was, is, and must be, a true, unsophisti- 
cated apple. Nothing else would have suited. " The apples, 
methought." says Sir Philip Sydney of his heroine in the Arcadia, 
" fell down from the trees to do homage to the apples of her 
breast." The idea seems to have originated with Theocritus 
(Idyl. 27, v. 50, edit. Valckenaer), from whom it was copied 



10 THE INDICATOR. [chap. iv. 

by the Italian writers. It makes a lovely figure in one of the 
most famous passages of Ariosto, where he describes the beauty 
of Alcina {Orlando Furioso, canto 7, st. 14) — 

Bianca neve e il bel collo, e J l petto latte ; 
II collo e tondo, il petto colmo e largo : 
Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte, 
Vengono e van come onda al primo margo, 
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte. 

Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow ; 
A rounded neck ; a bosom, where you see 
v Two crisp young ivory apples come and go, 
Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly, 
When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro. 

And after him, Tasso, in his fine ode on the Golden Age : — 

Allor tra fiori e linfe 

Traean dolci carole 

Gli Amoretti senz' archi e senza faci : 

Sedean pastori e ninfe 

Meschiando a le parole 

Vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci 

Strettamente tenaci. 

La verginella ignude 

Scopria sv.e fresche rose 

Ch' or tien nel velo ascose, 

E le pome del seno, acerbe e crude ; 

E spesso o in flume o in lago 

Scherzar si vide con 1' amata il vago. 

Then among streams and flowers, 

The little Winged Powers 

Went singing carols, without torch or bow ; 

The nymphs and shepherds sat 

Mingling with innocent chat 

Sports and low whispers, and with whispers low 

Kisses that would not go. 

The maiden, budding o'er, 

Kept not her bloom uneyed, 

Which now a veil must hide, 

Nor the crisp apples which her bosom bore : 

And oftentimes in river or in lake, 

The lover and his love their merry bath would take. 

Honi soit qui mal y pense. 



chap, v.] GODIVA. 11 



CHAPTER V. 

Godiva. 

This is the lady who, under the title of Countess of Coventry, 
used to make such a figure in our childhood upon some old 
pocket-pieces of that city. We hope she is in request there still ; 
otherwise the inhabitants deserve to be sent from Coventry. That 
city was famous in saintly legends for the visit of the eleven 
thousand virgins — an " incredible number," quoth Selden. But 
the eleven thousand virgins have vanished with their credibility, 
and a noble-hearted woman of flesh and blood is Coventry's true 
immortality. 

The story of Godiva is not a fiction, as many suppose it. At 
least it is to be found in Matthew of Westminster, and is not of a 
nature to have been a mere invention. Her name, and that of 
her husband, Leofric, are mentioned in an old chapter recorded 
by another early historian. That the story is omitted by Hume 
and others, argues little against it ; for the latter are accustomed 
to confound the most interesting anecdotes of times and manners 
with something below the dignity of history (a very absurd mis- 
take) ; and Hume, of whose philosophy better things might have 
been expected, is notoriously less philosophical in his history than 
in any other of his works. A certain coldness of temperament, 
not unmixed with aristocratical pride, or at least with a great 
aversion from everything like vulgar credulity, rendered his 
scepticism so extreme that it became a sort of superstition in 
turn, and blinded him to the claims of every species of enthusi- 
asm, civil as well as religious. Milton, with his poetical eye- 
sight, saw better, when he meditated the history of his native 
country. We do not remember whether he relates the present 
story, but we remember well, that at ,he beginning of his frag- 
ment on that subject, he says he shall relate doubtful stories as 



THE INDICATOR [chap. v. 



well as authentic ones, for the benefit of those, if no others, who 
will know how to make use of them, namely, the poets.* We 
have faith, however, in the story ourselves. It has innate evi- 
dence enough for us, to give full weight to that of the old annalist. 
Imagination can invent a good deal ; affection more ; but affec- 
tion can sometimes do things, such as the tenderest imagination 
is not in the habit of inventing ; and this piece of noble-hearted- 
ness we believe to have been one of them. 

Leofric, Earl of Leicester, was the lord of a large feudal 
territory in the middle of England, of which Coventry formed a 
part. He lived in the time of Edward the Confessor ; and was 
so eminently a feudal lord, that the hereditary greatness of his 
dominion appears to have been singular, even at that time, and 
to have lasted with an uninterrupted succession from Ethelbald 
to the Conquest — a period of more than three hundred years. 
He was a great and useful opponent of the famous Earl Godwin. 

Whether it was owing to Leofric or not, does not appear, but 
Coventry was subject to a very oppressive tollage, by which it 
would seem that the feudal despot enjoyed the greater part of 
the profit of all marketable commodities. The progress of 
knowledge has shown us how abominable, and even how unhappy 
for all parties, is an injustice of this description ; yet it gives one an 
extraordinary idea of the mind in those times, to see it capable of 
piercing through the clouds of custom, of ignorance, and even of 
self-interest, and petitioning the petty tyrant to forego such a 
privilege. This mind was Godiva's. The other sex, always 
more slow to admit reason through the medium of feeling, were 
then occupied to the full in their warlike habits. It was reserved 
for a woman to anticipate ages of liberal opinion, and to surpass 
them in the daring virtue of setting a principle above a custom. 

Godiva entreated her lord to give up his fancied right ; but in 
vain. At last, wishing to put an end to her importunities, he told 
her, either in a spirit of bitter jesting, or with a playful raillery 

* When Dr. Johnson, among his other impatient accusations of our great 
republican, charged him with telling unwarrantable stories in his history, he 
must have overlooked this announcement ; and yet, if we recollect, it is but 
in the second page of the fragment. So hasty, and blind, and liable to be 
put to shame, is prejudice. 



chap v.] GODIVA. 13 

that could not be bitter with so sweet an earnestness, that he 
would give up his tax, provided she rode through the city of 
Coventry, naked. She took him at his word. One may imagine 
the astonishment of a fierce, unlettered chieftain, not untinged 
with chivalry, at hearing a woman, and that too of the greatest 
delicacy and rank, maintaining seriously her intention of acting 
in a manner contrary to all that was supposed fitting for her sex, 
and at the same time forcing upon him a sense of the very 
beauty of her conduct by its principled excess. It is probable, 
that as he could not prevail upon her to give up her design, he 
had sworn some religious oath when he made his promise ; but 
be this as it may, he took every possible precaution to secure her 
modesty from hurt. The people of Coventry were ordered to 
keep within doors, to close up all their windows and outlets, and 
not to give a glance into the streets upon pain of death. The 
day came ; and Coventry, it may be imagined, was silent as 
death. The lady went out at the palace door, was set on horse- 
back, and at the same time divested of her wrapping garment, 
as if she had been going into a bath ; then taking the fillet from 
her head, she let down her long and lovely tresses, which poured 
around her body like a veil ; and so, with only her white legs 
remaining conspicuous, took her gentle way through the streets. 4 
What scene can be more touching to the imagination — beau- 
ty, modesty, feminine softness, a daring sympathy ; an extrava- 
gance, producing by the nobleness of its object and the strange 
gentleness of its means, the grave and profound effect of the 
most reverend custom. We may suppose the scene taking 
place in the warm noon ; the doors all shut, the windows clos- 
ed ; the Earl and his court serious and wondering ; the other 
inhabitants, many of them gushing with grateful tears, and all 
reverently listening to hear the footsteps of the horse : and 
lastly, the lady herself, with a downcast but not a shamefaced 

* " Nuda," says Matthew of Westminster, " equum ascendens, crines 
capitis et tricas dissolvens, corpus suum totum, praeter crura candidissima, 
inde velavit." See Selden's Notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton : Song 13. 
It is Selden from whom we learn, that Leofric was Earl of Leicester, and 
the other particulars of him mentioned above. The Earl was buried at 
Coventry; his Countess most probably in the same tomb. 



14 THE INDICATOR. [chap. v. 

eye, looking towards the earth through her flowing locks, and 
riding through the dumb and deserted streets, like an angelic 
spirit. 

It was an honorable superstition in that part of the country, 
that a man who ventured to look at the fair saviour of his native 
town, was said to have been struck blind. But the vulgar use 
to which this superstition has been turned by some writers of late 
times, is not so honorable. The whole story is as un vulgar and 
as sweetly serious as can be conceived. 

Drayton has not made so much of this subject as might have 
been expected ; yet what he says is said well and earnestly : 



-Coventry at length 



From her small mean regard, recovered state and strength ; 
By Leofric her lord, yet in base bondage held, 
The people from her marts by tollage were expelled : 
Whose duchess which desired this tribute to release, 
Their freedom often begged. The duke, to make her cease, 
Told her, that if she would his loss so far enforce, 
His will was, she should ride stark naked upon a horse 
By daylight through the street : which certainly he thought 
In her heroic breast so deeply would have wrought, 
That in her former suit she would have left to deal. 
But that most princely dame, as one devoured with zeal, 
Went on, and by that mean the city clearly freed. 



chap, vi.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 15 



CHAPTER VI. 

Pleasant Memories connected with various parts of the Metropolis. 

One of the best secrets of enjoyment is the art of cultivating 
pleasant associations. It is an art that of necessity increases 
with the stock of our knowledge ; and though in acquiring our 
knowledge we must encounter disagreeable associations also, 
yet if we secure a reasonable quantity of health by the way, 
these will be far less in number than the agreeable ones : for 
unless the circumstances which gave rise to the associations 
press upon us, it is only for want of health that the power of 
throwing off these burdensome images becomes suspended. 

And the beauty of this art is, that it does not insist upon 
pleasant materials to work on. Nor indeed does health. 
Health will give us a vague sense of delight in the midst of 
objects that would teaze and oppress us during sickness. But 
healthy association peoples this vague sense with agreeable 
images. It will comfort us, even when a painful sympathy 
with the distresses of others becomes a part of the very health 
of our minds. For instance, we can never go through St. 
Giles's, but the sense of the extravagant inequalities in human 
condition presses more forcibly upon us ; and yet some pleasant 
images are at hand, even there, to refresh it. They do not dis- 
place the others so as to injure the sense of public duty which 
they excite ; they only serve to keep our spirits fresh for their 
task, and hinder them from running into desperation or hope- 
lessness. In St. Giles's church lie Chapman, the earliest and 
best translator of Homer ; and Andrew Marvell, the wit and 
patriot, whose poverty Charles the Second could not bribe. We 
are sure to think of these two men, and of all the good and 
pleasure they have done to the world, as of the less happy 
objects about us. The steeple of the church itself, too, is a 
handsome one \ and there is a flock of pigeons in that neighbor 



16 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vi. 

hood, which we have stood with great pleasure to see careering 
about it of a fine afternoon, when a western wind had swept 
back lie smoke towards the city, and showed the white of the 
stone steeple piercing up into a blue sky. So much for St. 
Giles's, whose very name is a nuisance with some. It is dan- 
gerous to speak disrespectfully of old districts. Who would 
suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the 
metropolis ! And yet it is undoubtedly so. The Globe theatre 
was there, of which Shakspeare himself was the proprietor, and 
for which he wrote some of his plays. Globe-lane, in which it 
stood, is still extant, we believe, under that name. It is proba- 
ble that he lived near it : it is certain that he must have been 
much there. It is also certain that on the Borough side of the 
river, then and still called the Bank-side, in the same lodging, 
having the same wardrobe, and some say with other participa- 
tions more remarkable, lived Beaumont and Fletcher. In the 
Borough, also, at St. Saviour's, lie Fletcher and Massinger in 
one grave ; in the same church, under a monument and effigy, 
lies Chaucer's contemporary, Gower ; and from an inn in the 
Borough, the existence of which is still boasted, and the site 
pointed out by a picture and inscription, Chaucer sets out his 
pilgrims and himself on their famous road to Canterbury. 

To return over the water, who would expect anything poetical 
from East Smithfield ? Yet there was bdtn the most poetical 
even of the poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of 
Bow-bell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. 
Gray was born in Cornhill ; and Milton in Bread-street, Cheap- 
side. The presence of the same great poet and patriot has 
given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He 
lived in St. Bride's Church-yard, Fleet-street ; in Aldersgate- 
street, in Jewin-street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew-close ; in 
Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's-inn-Fields ; in Holborn, 
near Red Lion square ; in Scotland-yard ; in a house looking 
to St. James's Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on 
legislation,* and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and 
metaphysician ;f and he died in the Artillery-walk, Bunhill- 
fields ; and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate. 

* Mr. Bentham. f Mr. Hazlitt. 



chap, vi.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. ' 17 

Ben Jonson, who was born in " Hartshorne-lane, near Cha- 
ring-cross," was at one time "master" of a theatre in Barbican. 
He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and 
Moon, in Aldersgate-street ; and is known to have frequented, 
with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, 
which was in Cornhill. Beaumont, writing to him from the 
country, in an epistle full of jovial wit, says, — 

The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring 
To absent friends, because the self-same thing 
They know they see, however absent, is 
Here our best haymaker : forgive me this : 
It is our country style : — In this warm shine 
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine. 
******** 

Methinks the little wit I had, is lost, 

Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest 

Held up at tennis, which men do the best 

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen 

Done at the Mermaid ! Hard words that have been 

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 

As if that every one from whom they came 

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 

And had resolved to live a fool the rest 

Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown 

Wit, able enough to justify the town 

For three daysjpast, — wit, that might warrant be 

For the whole city to talk foolishly 

Till that were cancelled, and when that was gone, 

We left an air behind us, which alone 

Was able to make the two next companies 

Right witty ; — though but downright fools, mere wise. 

The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time, was 
the Devil tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben 
Jonson lived also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards 
lived. It is in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital 
into St. Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, 
that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him 
in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands 
upon the Lincoln's-inn garden wall, which looks towards Chan- 
cery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his 
illustrious brick and mortar remaining. 
3 



18 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vi. 

Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stands in the 
heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept 
invisible for young and learned eyes),* lie buriecj a multitude of 
persons of all ranks ; for it was once a monastery of Grey 
Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners 
taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Bur- 
dett, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death 
in the reign of Edward the Fourth, for wishing the horns of a 
favorite white stag which the king had killed, in the body of the 
person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing 
contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward the Second, — 

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, 

Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate. — Gray. 

Her " mate's" heart was buried with her, and placed upon her 
bosom ! a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a 
dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at 
school ; otherwise, after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, 
we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at night- 
time as we used. Camden, the " nourrice of antiquitie," 
received part of his education in this school ; and here also, not 
to mention a variety of others, known in the literary w r orld, were 
bred two of the best and most deep-spirited writers of the present 
day,*j* whose visits to the cloisters we well remember. 

In a palace on the site of Hatton-Garden, died John of Gaunt. 
Brook-house, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, 
was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord 
Brooke, the " friend of Sir Philip Sidney." In the same street, 
died, by a voluntary death of poison, that extraordinary person, 
Thomas Chatte^tjn, — 

The sleepless boy, who perished in his pride. — Wordsworth. 

He was buried in the grave-yard of the work-house in Shoe- 
lane ; — a circumstance at which one can hardly help feeling a 
movement of 'ndignation. Yet what could beadles and parish 

* It has since been unveiled, by an opening in Newgate- street 
f Coleridge and Lamb. 



chap, vi.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. lj 

officers know about such a being ? No more than Horace Wal- 
pole. In Gray's-inn lived, and in Gray's-inn garden meditated, 
Lord Bacon. In Southampton-row, Holborn, Cowper was fel- 
low-clerk to an attorney with the future Lord Chancellor Thur- 
low. At one of the Fleet-street corners of Chancery-lane, 
Cowley, we believe, was born. In Salisbury-court, Fleet-street, 
was the house of 1 nomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, the pre- 
cursor of Spenser, and one of the authors of the first regular 
English tragedy. On the demolition of this house, part of the 
ground was occupied by the celebrated theatre built after the 
Restoration, at which Betterton performed, and of which Sir 
William Davenant was manager. Lastly, here was the house 
and printing-office of Richardson. In Bolt-court, not far dis- 
tant, lived Dr. Johnson, who resided also some time in the Tem- 
ple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in 
BoswelL* Congreve died in Surrey-street, in the Strand, at his 
own house. At the corner of Beaufort-buildings, was Lilly's, 
the perfumer, at whose house the Tatler was published. In 
Maiden-lane ; Covent-garden, Voltaire lodged while in London, 
at the sign of the White Peruke. Tavistock-street was then, 
we believe, the Bond-street of the fashionable world \ as Bow- 
street was before. The change of Bow-street from fashion to 
the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of 
the spirit of the Beggar's Opera. Button's Coffee-house, the 
resort of the wits of Queen Anne's time, was in Russell-street, 
near where the Hummums now stand ; and in the same street, 
at the south-west corner of Bow-street, was the tavern where 
Dryden held regal possession of the arm-chair. The whole of 
Covent-garden is classic ground, from its association with the 
dramatic and other wits of the times of Dryden and Pope. But- 
ler lived, perhaps died, in Rose-street, and was buried in Co- 
vent-garden churchyard ; where Peter Pindar the other day fol- 
lowed him. In Leicester-square, on the site of Miss Linwood's 
exhibition and other houses, was the town-mansion of the Syd- 

* The temple must have had many eminent inmates. Among them it is 
believed was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strength of an old record, 
to have been fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet- 
Btreet. 



20 THE INDICATOR. [chap, v • 

neys, Earls of Leicester, the family of Sir Philip and Algernon 
Sydney. In the same square lived Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
Hogarth. Dryden lived and died in Gerrard-street, in a house 
which looked backwards into the garden of Leicester-house. 
Newton lived in St. Martin's-street, on the south side of the 
square. Steele lived in Bury-street, St. James's : he furnishes 
an illustrious precedent for the loungers in St. James's-street, 
where a scandal-monger of those times delighted to detect Isaac 
BickerstafF in the person of Captain Steele, idling before the 
coffee-houses, and jerking his leg and stick alternately against 
the pavement. We have mentioned the birth of Ben Jonson 
near Charing-cross. Spenser died at an inn, where he put up 
on his arrival from Ireland, in King-street, Westminster, — the 
same which runs at the back of Parliament-street to the Abbey. 
Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea. Addison lived and died in 
Holland-house, Kensington, now the residence of the accomplish- 
ed nobleman who takes his title from it. In Brook-street, Gros- 
venor-square, lived Handel ; and in Bentinck-street, Manches- 
ter-square, Gibbon. We have omitted to mention that De Foe 
kept a hosier's shop in Cornhill ; and that on the site of the 
present Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane, stood the man- 
sion of the Wriothesleys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom 
was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare. But what have we 
not omitted also ? No less an illustrious head than the Boar's, 
in Eastcheap,— the Boar's-head tavern, the scene of Falstaff's 
revels. We believe the place is still marked out by the sign.* 
But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's-head ? Have we 
not all been there, time out of mind ? And is it not a more 
real as well as notorious thing to us than the London tavern, or 
the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White's, or 
What's-his-name's, or any other of your contemporary or fleet- 
ing taps ? 

But a line or two, a single sentence in an autaor of former 
times, will often give a value to the commonest object. It not 
only gives us a sense of its duration, but we seem to be looking 

* It has lately disappeared, in the alterations occasioned by the new Lon- 
don Bridge. 



chap, vi.] MEMORIES OF THE METROPOLIS. 21 



at it in company with its old observer ; and we are reminded at the 
same time of all that was agreeable in him. We never saw. for 
instance, the gilt ball at the top of the College of Physicians,* 
without thinking of that pleasant mention of it in Garth's Dispen- 
sary, and of all the wit and generosity of that amiable man : — 

Not far from that most celebrated placef , 
Where angry Justice shows her awful face, 
Where little villains must submit to fate, 
That great ones may enjoy the world in state ■ 
There stands a dome, majestic to the sight, 
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height ; 
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill, 
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill. 

Gay 3 in describing the inconvenience of the late narrow part 
of the Strand, by St. Clement's, took away a portion of its 
unpleasantness to the next generation, by associating his memory 
with the objects in it. We did not miss without regret even the 
" combs" that hung " dangling in your face" at a shop which he 
describes, and which was standing till the late improvements 
took place. The rest of the picture is still alive. (Trivia, b. 

mo 

Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, 
Whose straitened bounds encroach upon the Strand ; 
iWhere the low pent-house bows the walkers head, 
And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread 
Where not a post protects the narrow space, 
And strung in twines, combs dangle in thy face ; 
Summon at once thy courage, rouse thy care ; 
Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware ! 
Forth issuing from steep lanes, the colliers' steeds 
Drag the black load : another cart succeeds ; 
Team follows team, crowds heaped on crowds appear, 
And wait impatient till the road grow clear. 

There is a touch in the Winter Picture in the same poem, 
which everybody will recognize : — 

At White's the harnessed chairman idly stands, 
And swings around his waist his tingling hands. 

* In Warwick-lane, now a manufactory. f The Old Bailey. 



22 THE INDICATOR. [chap, vi 

The bewildered passenger in the Seven Dials is compared tc 
Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth. And thus we come round to 
the point at which we began. 

Before we rest our wings, however, we must take another 
dart over the city as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due 
tenderness for boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer's has 
existed as a piece of local humor for nearly four hundred and 
fifty years. Speaking of the Prioress, who makes such a deli- 
cate figure among his Canterbury Pilgrims, he tells us, in the 
list of her accomplishments, that — 

French she spake full faire and featously ; 

adding with great gravity — 

After the school of Stratforde atte Bowe ; 
For French of Paris was to her unknowe 



ckap. vii.] ADVICE TO THE MELANCHOLY. 23 



CHAPTER VII. 

Advice to the Melancholy. 

If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find upon a little 
inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet 
are cheerful now. If you have been melancholy many times, 
recollect that you have got over all those times ; and try if you 
cannot find out means of getting over them better,. 

Do not imagine that mind alone is concerned in your bad 
spirits. The body has a great deal to do with these matters. 
The mind may undoubtedly affect the body ; but the body also 
affects the mind. There is a re-action between them ; and by 
lessening it on either side, you diminish the pain on both. 

If you are melancholy, and know not why, be assured it must 
arise entirely from some physical weakness ; and do your best to 
strengthen yourself. The blood of the melancholy man is thick 
and slow ; the blood of a lively man is clear and quick. En- 
deavor therefore to put your blood in motion. Exercise is the 
best way to do it ; but you may also help yourself, in modera- 
tion, with wine, or other excitements. Only you must trke care 
so to proportion the use of any artificial stimulus, that it may not 
render the blood languid by over-exciting it at first ; and 'hat 
you may be able to keep up, by the natural stimulus only, t^ -> 
help you have given yourself by the artificial. 

Regard the bad weather as somebody has advised us to handle 
the nettle. In proportion as you are delicate with it, it will make 
you feel ; but 

Grasp it like a man of mettle, 
And the rogue obeys you well. 

Do not the less, however, on that account, take all reasonable 
precaution and arms against it, — your boots, &c, against wet feet, 



24 THE INDICATOR. [chap. vii. 

and your great-coat or umbrella against the rain. It is timidity 
and flight, which are to be deprecated, not proper armor for the 
battle. The first will lay you open to defeat, on the least attack. 
A proper use of the latter will only keep you strong for it. Plato 
had such a high opinion of exercise, that he said it was a cure 
even for a wounded conscience. Nor is this opinion a dangerous 
one. For there is no system, even of superstition, however 
severe or cruel in other matters, that does not allow a wounded 
conscience to be curable by some means. Nature will work out 
its rights and its kindness some way or other, through the worst 
sophistications ; and this is one of the instances in which she 
seems to raise herself above all contingencies. The conscience 
may have been wounded by artificial or by real guilt ; but then 
she will tell it in those extremities, that even the real guilt may 
have been produced by circumstances. It is her kindness alone, 
which nothing can pull down from its predominance. 

See fair play between cares and pastimes. Diminish your 
artificial wants as much as possible, whether you are rich or 
poor ; for the rich man's, increasing by indulgence, are apt to out- 
weigh even the abundance of his means ; and the poor man's 
diminution of them renders his means the greater. On the 
other hand, increase all your natural and healthy enjoyments. 
Cultivate your afternoon fire-side, the society of your friends, the 
company of agreeable children, music, theatres, amusing books, 
an urbane and generous gallantry. He who thinks any innocent 
pastime foolish, has either to grow wiser or is past the ability to 
do so. In the one case, his notion of being childish is itself a 
childish notion. In the other, his importance is of so feeble and 
hollow a cast, that it dare not move for fear of tumbling to 
pieces. 

A friend of ours, who knows as well as any other man how to 
unite industry with enjoyment, has set an excellent example to 
those who can afford the leisure, by taking two Sabbaths every 
week instead of one, — not Methodistical Sabbaths, but days of 
rest which pay true homage to the Supreme Being by enjoying 
his creation. 

One of the best pieces of advice for an ailing spirit is to go to 
no sudden extremes — to adopt no great and extreme changes in 



chap, vii.] ADVICE TO THE MELANCHOLY. 2o 

diet or other habits. They may make a man look very great 
and philosophic to his own mind \ but they are not fit for a being 
to whom custom has been truly said to be a second nature. Dr. 
Cheyne may tell us that a drowning man cannot too quickly get 
himself out of the water; but the analogy is not good. If the 
water has become a second habit, he might almost as well say 
that a fish could not get too quickly out of it. 

Upon this point, Bacon says that we should discontinue what 
we think hurtful by little and little. And he quotes with admi- 
ration the advice of Celsus : that " a man do vary and inter 
change contraries, but rather with an inclination to the more 
benign extreme." " Use fasting," he says, " and full eating, 
but rather full eating ; watching and sleep, but rather sleep ; 
sitting and exercise, but rather exercise, and the like ; so shall 
nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries." 

We cannot do better than conclude with one or two other 
passages out of the same Essay, full of his usual calm wisdom 
" If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange foi 
your body when you need it." (He means that a general state 
of health should not make us over-confident and contemptuous 
of physic ; but that we should use it moderately if required, that 
it may not be too strange to us when required most.) " If you 
make it too familiar, it will have no extraordinary effect when 
sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain sea- 
sons, than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a 
custom ; for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less." 

" As for the passions and studies of the mind." says he, " avoid 
envy, anxious fears, anger fretting inwards, sujtle and knotty 
inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not com 
municated" (for as he says finely, somewhere else, they who 
keep their griefs to themselves, are " cannibals of their own 
hearts"). " Entertain hopes ; mirth rather than joy " (that is 
to say, cheerfulness rather than boisterous merriment) ; " variety 
of delights rather than surfeit of them ; wonder and admiration, 
and therefore novelties ; studies that fill the mind with splendid 
and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of 
nature." 



26 THE INDICATOR. [chap, vm 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Charles Brandon and Mary Queen of France. 

The fortune of Charles Brandon was remarkable. He was ar 
honest man, yet the favorite of a despot. He was brave, hand- 
some, accomplished, possessed even delicacy of sentiment ; yet 
he retained the despot's favor to the last. He even had the 
perilous honor of being beloved by his master's sister, without 
having the least claim to it by birth : and yet, instead of its 
destroying them both, he was allowed to be her husband. 

Charles Brandon was the son of Sir William Brandon, whose 
skull was cleaved at Bosworth by Richard the Third, while bear- 
ing the standard of the Duke of Richmond. Richard dashed at 
the standard, and appears to have been thrown from his horse by 
Sir William, whose strength and courage, however, could not 
save him from the angry desperation of the king. 

But Time, whose wheeles with various motion runne, 
Repayes this service fully to his sonne, 
Who marries Richmond's daughter, born betweene 
Two royal parents, and endowed a queene. 

Sir John Beaumont s Bosworth Field. 

The father's fate must have had its effect in securing the fortunes 
of the son. Young Brandon grew up with Henry the Seventh's 
children, and was the playmate of his future king and bride. The 
prince, as he increased in years, seems to have carried the idea 
of Brandon with him like that of a second self; and the princess, 
whose affection was not hindered from becoming personal by 
anything sisterly, nor, on the other hand, allowed to waste itself 
in too equal a familiarity, may have felt a double impulse given 
to it by the improbability of her ever being suffered to become 
his wife. Royal females, in most countries, have certainly none 
of the advantages of their rank, whatever the males may have 



chap, viii.] CHARLES BRANDON -MAR V OF FRANCE 27 

Mary was destined to taste the usual bitterness of their lot ; but 
she was repaid. At the conclusion of the war with France, she 
was married to the old king Louis the Twelfth, who witnessed 
from a couch the exploits of her future husband at the tourna- 
ments. The doings of Charles Brandon that time were long 
remembered. The love between him and the young queen was 
suspected by the French Court ; and he had just seen her enter 
Paris in the midst of a gorgeous procession, like Aurora come to 
marry Tithonus. Brandon dealt his chivalry about him accord- 
ingly with such irresistible vigor, that the dauphin, in a fit of 
jealousy, secretly introduced into the contest a huge German, who 
was thought to be of a strength incomparable. But Brandon 
grappled with him, and with seeming disdain and detection, so 
pummelled him about the head with the hilt of his sword, that the 
blood burst through the vizor. Imagine the feelings of the queen, 
when he came and made her an offering of the German's shield ! 
Drayton, in his Heroical Epistle, we know not on what authority, 
tells us, that on one occasion during the combats, perhaps this 
particular one, she could not help crying out, " Hurt not my 
sweet Charles," or words to that effect. He then pleasantly 
represents her as doing away suspicion by falling to commenda- 
tions of the dauphin, and affecting not to know who the conquer- 
ing knight was — an ignorance not very probable ; but the knights 
sometimes disguised themselves purposely. 

The old king did not long survive his festivities. He died in 
less than three months, on the first day of the year 1515; and 
Brandon, who had been created Duke of Suffolk the year before, 
reappeared at the French court, with letters of condolence, and 
more persuasive looks. The royal widow was young, beautiful, 
and rich ; and it was likely that her hand would be sought by 
many princely lovers ; but she was now resolved to reward her- 
self for her sacrifice, and in less than two months she privately 
married her first love. The queen, says a homely but not mean 
poet (Warner, in his Albion's England), thought that to cast too 
many doubts 

Were oft to erre no lesse 
Than to be rash : and thus no doubt 



25 THE INDICATOR. [chap. viii. 

The gentle queen did guesse, 
That seeing this or that, at first, 

Or last, had likelyhood, 
A man so much a manly man 

Were dastardly withstood. 
Then kisses revelled on their lips, 

To either's equal good. 

Henry showed great anger at first, real or pretended ; but he 
had not then been pampered into unbearable self-will by a long 
reign of tyranny. He forgave his sister and friend ; and they 
were publicly wedded at Greenwich on the 13th of May. 

It was during the festivities on this occasion (at least we believe 
so, for we have not the chivalrous Lord Herbert's Life of Henry 
the Eighth by us, which is most probably the authority for the 
story ; and being a good thing, it is omitted, as usual, by the his- 
torians) that Charles Brandon gave a proof of the fineness of his 
nature, equally just towards himself, and conciliating towards the 
jealous. He appeared, at a tournament, on a saddle-cloth, made 
half of frize and half of cloth-of-gold, and with a motto on each 
half. One of the mottos ran thus : 

Cloth of frize, be not too bold, 

Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold. 

The other: 

Cloth of gold, do not despise, 

Though thou art matched with cloth of frize. 

It is this beautiful piece of sentiment which puts a heart into 
his history and makes it worthy remembering. 



chap, ix.] aNCIENT HOUSEHOLD 30DS. 29 



CHAPTER IX. 

On the Household Gods of the Ancients, 

The Ancients had three kinds of Household Gods — the Daimon 
(Daemon) or Genius, the Penates, and the Lares. The first was 
supposed to be a spirit allotted to every man from his birth, some 
say with a companion ; and that one of them was a suggester of 
good thoughts and the other of evil. It seems, however, that the 
Genius was a personification of the conscience, or rather of the 
prevailing impulses of the mind, or the other self of a man ; and 
it was in this sense most likely that Socrates condescended to 
speak of his well-known Dsemon, Genius, or Familiar Spirit, who, 
as he was a good man, always advised him to a good end. The 
Genius was thought to paint ideas upon the mind in as lively a 
manner as if in a looking-glass ; upon which we chose which of 
them to adopt. Spenser, a deeply learned as well as imaginative 
poet, describes it in one of his most comprehensive though not 
most poetical stanzas, as 

That celestial Powre, to whom the care 

Of life, and generation of all 
That lives, pertaine in charge particulare ; 
Who wondrous things concerning our welfare, 
And straunge phantomes doth lett us ofte foresee, 
And ofte of secret ills bids us beware : 
That is our Selfe, whom though we do not see 
Yet each doth in himselfe it well perceive to bee 

Therefore a God him sage antiquity 

Did wisely make. — Faerie Queene, book ii., st. 47. 

Of the belief in an Evil Genius, a celebrated example is fur- 
nished in Plutarch's account of Brutus's vision, of rvhich Shak- 
speare has given so fine a version (Julius Ccesar, Act 4, Sc. 3), 
Beliefs of this kind seem traceable from one superstition to 



30 THE INDICATOR. [chap. ix. 

another, and in some instances are immediately so. But fear, and 
ignorance, and even the humility of knowledge, are at hand to 
furnish them, where precedent is wanting. There is no doubt, 
however, that the Romans, who copied and in general vulgarized 
the Greek mythology, took their Genius from the Greek Daimon : 
and as the Greek word has survived and taken shape in the com- 
mon word Daemon, which, by scornful reference to the Heathen 
religion, came at last to signify a Devil, so the Latin word Genius, 
not having been used by the translators of the Greek Testament, 
has survived with a better meaning, and is employed to express 
our most genial and intellectual faculties. Such and such a man 
is said to indulge his genius — he has a genius for this and that art 
— he has a noble genius, a fine genius, an original and peculiar 
genius. And as the Romans, from attributing a genius to every 
man at his birth, came to attribute one to places and to soils, and 
other more comprehensive peculiarities, so we have adopted the 
same use of the term into our poetical phraseology. We speak 
also of the genius or idiomatic peculiarity of a language. One of* 
the most curious and edifying uses of the word Genius took place 
in the English translation of the French Arabian Nights, which 
speaks of our old friends the Genie and the Genies. This is 
nothing more than the French word retained from the original 
translator, who applied the Roman word Genius to the Arabian 
Dive or Elf. 

One of the stories with which Pausanias has enlivened his des- 
cription of Greece, is relative to a Genius. He says that one of 
the companions of Ulysses having been killed by the people of 
Temesa, they were fated to sacrifice a beautiful virgin every 
year to his manes. They were about to immolate one as usual, 
when Euthymus, a conqueror ,, in the Olympic Games, touched 
with pity at her fate and admiration of her beauty, fell in love 
with her, and resolved to try if he could not put an end to so 
terrible a custom. He accordingly got permission from the state 
to marry her, provided he could rescue her from her dreadful 
expectant. He armed himself, waited in the temple, and the 
genius appeared. It was said to have been of an appalling pre- 
sence. Its shape was every way formidable, its color of an 
intense black, and it was gh'ded about with a wolf-skin. But 



chap, ix.] ANCIENT HOUSEHOLD GODS. 31 

Euthymus fought and conquered it ; upon which it fled madly, 
not only beyond the walls, but the utmost bounds of Temesa, 
and rushed into the sea. 

The Penates were gods of the house and family. Collec- 
tively speaking they also presided over cities, public roads, and 
at last over all places with which men were conversant. Their 
chief government however was supposed to be over the most 
inner and secret part of the house, and the subsistence and wel- 
fare of its inmates. They were chosen at will out of the num- 
ber of the gods, as the Roman in modern times chose his favor- 
ite saint. In fact they were only the higher gods themselves, 
descending into a kind of household familiarity. They were the 
personification of a particular Providence. The most striking 
mention of the Penates which we can call to mind is in one of 
Virgil's most poetical passages. It is where they appear to 
iEneas to warn him from Crete, and announce his destined em- 
pire in Italy. (Lib* III., v. 147.) 

Nox erat, et terris animalia somnus habebat : 
Effigies sacraB divum, Phrygiique Penates, 
Quos mecum a Troja, mediisque ex ignibus urbis 
Extuleram, visi ante oculos adstare jacentis 
In somnis, multo manifesti lumine, qua se 
Plena per insertas fundebat lima fenestras. 

'Twas night ; and sleep was on all living things. 
I lay, and saw before my very eyes 
Dread shapes of gods, and Phrygian deities, 
The great Penates ; whom with reverent joy 
I bore from out the heart of burning Troy. 
Plainly I saw them, standing in the light 
Which the moon poured into the room that night. 

And again, after they had addressed him — 

Nee sopor illud erat : sed coram agnoscere vultus, 
Velatasque comas, praesentiaque ora videbar : 
Turn gelidus toto manabat corpore sudor. 

It was no dream : I saw them face to face, 
Their hooded hair ; and felt them so before 
My being, that I burst at every pore. 



32 THE INDICATOR. [chap, ix 

The Lares, or Lars, were the lesser and most familiar House- 
hold Gods, and though their offices were afterwards extended a 
good deal, in the same way as those of the Penates, with whom 
they are often confounded, their principal sphere was the fire- 
place. This was in the middle of the room ; and the statues of 
the Lares generally stood about it in little niches. They are 
said to have been in the shape of monkeys ; more likely manni- 
kins, or rude little human images. Some were made of wax, 
some of stone, and others doubtless of any material for sculp- 
ture. They were represented with good-natured grinning coun- 
tenances, were clothed in skins, and had little dogs at their feet. 
Some writers make them the offspring of the goddess Mania, who 
presided over the spirits of the dead ; and suppose that originally 
they were the same as those spirits ; which is a very probable 
as well as agreeable superstition, the old nations of Italy having 
been accustomed to bury their dead in their houses. Upon this 
supposition the good or benevolent spirits were called Familiar 
Lares, and the evil or malignant ones Larvae and Lemures. 
Thus Milton, in his awful Hymn on the Nativity : — 

In consecrated earth, 

And on the holy hearth, 

The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint. 

In urns and altars round, 

A drear and dying sound 

Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint 

And the chill marble seems to sweat, 

While each Peculiar Power foregoes his wonted seat. 

But Ovid tells a story of a gossiping nymph Lara, who having 
told Juno of her husband's amour with Juturna, was " sent to 
Hell " by him, and courted by Mercury on the road ; the con- 
sequence of which was the birth of the Lares. This seems to 
have a natural reference enough to the gossiping over fire- 
places. 

It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance between 
these lesser household Gods and some of the offices of our old 
English elves and fairies. Dacier, in a note upon Horace (Lib. 
I., Od. 12), informs us, that in some parts of Languedoc, in his 



chap. ix.] ANCIENT HOUSEHOLD GODS. 33 

time, the fire-place was still called the Lar ; and that the name 
was also given to houses. 

Herrick, a poet of the Anacreontic order in the time of Eliza- 
beth, who was visited, perhaps more than any other, except 
Spenser, with a sense of the pleasantest parts of the ancient 
mythology, has written some of his lively little odes upon the 
Lares. We have not them by us at this moment, but we 
remember one beginning, — 

It was, and still my care is 
To worship you, the Lares. 

We take the opportunity of the Lar's being mentioned in it, 
to indulge ourselves in a little poem of Martial's, very charming 
for its simplicity. It is an Epitaph on a child of the name of 
Erotion. 

Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra, 
Crimine quam fati sexta peremit hiems. 

Quisquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli, 
Manibus exiguis annua justa dato. 

Sic Lare perpetuo, sic turba sospite, solus 
Flebilis in terra sit lapis iste tua. 

THE EPITAPH OF EROTION. 

Underneath this greedy stone 

Lies little sweet Erotion ; 

Whom the fates, with hearts as cold, 

Nipt away at six years old. 

Thou, whoever thou may'st be, 

That hast this small field after me, 

Let the yearly rites be paid 

To her little slender shade ; 

So shall no disease or jar 

Hurt thy house or chill thy Lar ; 

But this tomb here be alone, 

The only melancholy stone. 



34 THE INDICATOR. [chap, x 



CHAPTER X. 

Social Genealogy. 

It is a curious and pleasant thing to consider that a link of per- 
sonal acquaintance can be traced up from the authors of our own 
times to those of Shakspeare, and to Shakspeare himself. Ovid, 
in recording his intimacy with Propertius and Horace, regrets 
that he had only seen Virgil (Trist., Lib. IV., v. 51). But still 
he thinks the sight of him worth remembering. And Pope, 
when a child, prevailed on some friends to take him to a coffee- 
house which Dryden frequented, merely to look at him ; which 
he did, with great satisfaction. Now such of us as have shaken 
hands with a living poet, might be able to reckon up a series of 
connecting shakes, to the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, and 
of FalstafF, and of Desdemona. 

With some living poets it is certain. There is Thomas Moore, 
for instance, who knew Sheridan. Sheridan knew Johnson, who 
was the friend of- Savage, who knew Steele, who knew Pope. 
Pope was intimate with Congreve, and Congreve with Dryden. 
Dryden is said to have visited Milton. Milton is said to have 
known Davenant; and to have been saved by him from the 
revenge of the restored court, in return for having saved Dave- 
nant from the revenge of the Commonwealth. But if the link 
between Dryden and Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is some- 
what apocryphal, or rather dependant on tradition (for Rich- 
ardson the painter tells us the story from Pope, who had it from 
Betterton the actor, one of Davenant's company), it may be car- 
ried at once from Dryden to Davenant, with whom he was 
unquestionably intimate. Davenant then knew Hobbes, who 
knew Bacon, who knew Ben Jonson, who was intimate with 
Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Donne, Drayton, Camden, 
Selden, Clarendon, Sydney, Raleigh, and perhaps all the great 
men of Elizabeth's and James's time, the greatest of them all 



chap, x.] SOCIAL GENEALOGY. 35 

undoubtedly. Thus have we a link of "beamy hands " from 
our own times up to Shakspeare. 

In this friendly genealogy we have omitted the numerous 
side-branches or common friendships. It may be mentioned, 
however, in order not to omit Spenser, that Davenant resided 
some time in the family of Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip 
Sidney. Spenser's intimacy with Sidney is mentioned by him- 
self in a letter, still extant, to Gabriel Harvey. 

We will now give the authorities for our intellectual pedigree. 
Sheridan is mentioned in Boswell as being admitted to the cele- 
brated club of which Johnson, Goldsmith, and others were mem- 
bers. He had just written the School for Scandal, which made 
him the more welcome. Of Johnson's friendship with Savage 
(we cannot help beginning the sentence with his favorite leading 
preposition), the well-known life is an interesting record. It is 
said that in the commencement of their friendship, they some- 
times wandered together about London for want of a lodging — 
more likely for Savage's want of it, and Johnson's fear of offend- 
ing him by offering a share of his own. But we do not remem- 
ber how this circumstance is related by Boswell. 

Savage's intimacy with Steele is recorded in a pleasant anec- 
dote which he told Johnson. Sir Richard once desired him, 
"with an air of the utmost importance," says his biographer, "to 
come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage 
came as he had promised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir 
Richard waiting for him and ready to go out. What was 
intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjec- 
ture, and was not willing to inquire, but immediately seated him- 
self with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to drive, 
and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-park Corner, 
where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private 
room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish 
a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he 
might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir 
Richard dictated and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had 
been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised 
at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesi- 
tation, ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without 



36 THE INDICATOR. [chap, x 

reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their din- 
ner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in 
the afternoon. 

"Mr. Savage then imagined that his task was over, and 
expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning and return 
home ; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told 
him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be 
sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore 
obliged to go and offer their new production for sale for two 
guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard 
then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his credi- 
tors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning." 
Steele's acquaintance with Pope, who wrote some papers for 
his Guardian, appears in the letters and other works of the wits of 
that time. Johnson supposes that it was his friendly interference, 
which attempted to bring Pope and Addison together after a 
jealous separation. Pope's friendship with Congreve appears 
also in his letters. He also dedicated the Iliad to Congreve, over 
the heads of peers and patrons. The dramatist, whose conversa- 
tion most likely partook of the elegance and wit of his writings, 
and whose manners appear to have rendered him a universal 
favorite, had the honor, in his youth, of attracting the respect and 
regard of Dryden. He was publicly hailed by him as his suc- 
cessor, and affectionately bequeathed the care of his laurels. 
Dryden did not know who had been looking at him in the coffee- 
house. 

Already I am worn with cares and age, 

And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage ; 

Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense, 

I live a rent-charge on his providence. 

But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn, 

Whom I foresee to better fortune born, 

Be kind to my remains ; and defend, 

Against your judgment, your departed friend ! 

Let not th' insulting foe my fame pursue, 

But shade those laurels wrrich descend to you. 

Congreve did so, with great tenderress. 

Dryden is reported to have asked Milton's permission to turn 
his Paradise Lost into a rhyming tragedy, which he called the 
State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man; a work, such as might be 



chap, x.] SOCIAL GENEALOGY. 37 

expected from such a mode of alteration. The venerable poet is 
said to have answered, " Ay, young man, you may tag my verses, 
if you will." Be the connexion, however, of Dryden with Milton, 
or of Milton with Davenant, as it may, Dryden wrote the alteration 
of Shakspeare's Tempest, as it is now perpetrated, in conjunction 
with Davenant. They were great hands, but they should not 
have touched the pure grandeur of Shakspeare. The intimacy 
of Davenant with Hobbes is to be seen by their correspondence 
prefixed to Gondibert. Hobbes was at one time secretary to 
Lord Bacon, a singularly illustrious instance of servant and mas- 
ter. Bacon also had Ben Jonson for a retainer in a similar capa- 
city ; and Jonson's link with the preceding writers could be 
easily supplied through the medium of Greville and Sidney, and 
indeed of many others of his contemporaries. Here, then, we 
arrive at Shakspeare, and feel the electric virtue of his hand. 
Their intimacy, dashed a little, perhaps, with jealousy on the part 
of Jonson, but maintained to the last by dint of the nobler part of 
him, and of Shakspeare's irresistible fineness of nature, is a thing 
as notorious as their fame. Fuller says : " Many were the wit- 
combates betwixt (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I 
behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war : 
master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning : 
solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the Eng- 
lish man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn 
with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the 
quickness of his wit and invention." This is a happy simile, 
with the exception of what is insinuated about Jonson's greater 
solidity. But let Jonson show for himself the affection with which 
he regarded one, who did not irritate or trample down rivalry, but 
rose above it like the sun, and turned emulation to worship. 

Soul of the age ! 
Th' applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage ! 
My Shakspeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further, to make thee a room ; 
Thou art a monument without a tomb ; 
And art alive still, while thy book doth live, 

And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 

***** 

He was not of an age, but for all time. 



3S THE INDICATOR. [chap, tu 



CHAPTER XL 

Angling. 

The anglers are a race of men who puzzle us. We do not mean 
for their patience, which is laudable, nor for the infinite non-suc- 
cess of some of them, which is desirable. Neither do we agree 
with the good old joke attributed to Swift, that angling is always 
to be considered as " a stick and a string, with a fly at one end and 
a fool at the other." Nay, if he had books with him, and a plea- 
sant day, we can account for the joyousness of that prince of 
punters, who, having been seen in the same spot one morning and 
evening, and asked whether he had had any success, said, No, 
but in the course of the day he had had " a glorious nibble." 

But the anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime ; yet it 
puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on 
their meditative faculties ; and yet their only excuse is a want of 
thought. It is this that puzzles us. Old Isaac Walton, their 
patriarch, speaking of his inquisitorial abstractions on the banks 
of a river, says, 

Here we may 
Think and pray, 
Before death 
Stops our breath. 
Other joys 
Are but toys, 
And to be lamented. 

So saying, he " stops the breath" of a trout, by plucking him up 
into an element too thin to respire, with a hock and a tortured 
worm in his jaws — 

Other joys 
Are but toys 



chap, xi.] ANGLING. 39 

If you ride, walk, or skate, or play at cricket, or at rackets, or 
enjoy a ball or a concert, it is " to be lamented." To put plea- 
sure into the faces of half a dozen agreeable women, is a toy 
unworthy of the manliness of a worm-sticker. But to put a hook 
into the gills of a carp — there you attain the end of a reasonable 
being ; there you show yourself truly a lord of the creation. To 
plant your feet occasionally in the mud, is also a pleasing step. 
So is cutting your ancles with weeds and stones — 

Other joys 
Are but toys. 

The book of Isaac Walton upon angling is a delightful perform- 
ance in some respects. It smells of the country air, and of the 
flowers in cottage windows. Its pictures of rural scenery, its 
simplicity, its snatches of old songs, are all good and refreshing ; 
and his prodigious relish of a dressed fish would not be grudged 
him, if he had killed it a little more decently. Hq really seems 
to have a respect for a piece of salmon ; to approach it, like the 
grace, with his hat off. But what are we to think of a man, who, 
in the midst of his tortures of other animals, is always valuing 
himself on his harmlessness ; and who actually follows up one of 
his most complacent passages of this kind, with an injunction to 
impale a certain worm twice upon the hook, because it is lively, 
and might get off! All that can be said of such an extraordinary 
inconsistency is, that having been bred up in an opinion of the 
innocence of his amusement, and possessing a healthy power of 
exercising voluntary thoughts (as far as he had any), he must 
have dozed over the opposite side of the question, so as to become 
almost, perhaps quite, insensible to it. And angling does, indeed, 
seem the next thing to dreaming. It dispenses with locomotion, 
reconciles contradictions, and renders the very countenance null 
and void. A friend of ours, who is an admirer of Walton, was 
struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face 
to a fish. It is hard, angular, and of no expression. It seems to 
have been "subdued to what it worked in;" to have become 
native to the watery element. One might have said to Walton, 
" Oh ! flesh, how art thou fishified I" He looks like a pike, 
dressed in broadcloth instead of butter. 



40 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xi 

The face of his pupil and follower, or, as he fondly called him- 
self, son, Charles Cotton, a poet and a man of wit, is more good- 
natured and uneasy.* Cotton's pleasures had not been confined 
to fishing. His sympathies, indeed, had been a little superabun- 
dant, and left him, perhaps, not so great a power of thinking as 
he pleased. Accordingly, we find in his writings more symp- 
toms of scrupulousness upon the subject than in those of his 
father. 

Walton says, that an angler does no hurt but to fish ; and this 
he counts as nothing. Cotton argues, that the slaughter of 
them is not to be " repented; 5 ' and he says to his father (which 
looks as if the old gentleman sometimes thought upon the sub- 
ject too), 

There whilst behind some bush we wait 

The scaly people to betray, 
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait, 

To make the preying trout our prey. 

This argument, and another about fish's being made for " man's 
pleasure and diet," are all that anglers have to say for the inno- 
cence of their sport. But they are both as rank sophistications 
as can be ; sheer beggings of the question. To kill fish outright 
is a different matter. Death is common to all ; and a trout, 
speedily killed by a man, may suffer no worse fate than from the 
jaws of a pike. It is the mode, the lingering cat-like cruelty of 
the angler's sport, that renders it unworthy. If fish were made 
to be so treated, then men were also made to be racked and 
throttled by inquisitors. Indeed, among other advantages of 
angling, Cotton reckons up a tame, fish-like acquiescence to 
whatever the powerful choose to inflict. 

We scratch not our pates, 

Nor repine at the rates 

Our superiors impose on our living : 

But do frankly submit, 

Knowing they have more wit 

In demanding, than we have in giving. 

* The reader may see both the portrait* in the late editions of Walton. 



chap, xi.] ANGLING. 41 

Whilst quiet we sit 

We conclude all things fit, .. 

Acquiescing with hearty submission, &c. 

And this was no pastoral fiction. The anglers of those times, 
whose skill became famous from the celebrity of their names, 
chiefly in divinity, were great fallers-in with passive obedience. 
They seemed to think (whatever they found it necessary to say 
now and then upon that point) that the great had as much right 
to prey upon men, as the small had upon fishes ; only the men, 
luckily, had not hooks put into their jaws, and the sides of their 
cheeks torn to pieces. The two most famous anglers in history 
are Antony and Cleopatra. These extremes of the angling 
character are very edifying. 

We should like to know what these grave divines would have 
said to the heavenly maxim of " Do as you would be done by." 
Let us imagine ourselves, for instance, a sort of human fish. 
Air is but a rarer fluid ; and at present, in this November wea- 
ther, a supernatural being who should look down upon us from a 
higher atmosphere, would have some reason to regard us as a 
kind of pedestrian carp. Now fancy a Genius fishing for us. 
Fancy him baiting a great hook with pickled salmon, and 
twitching up old Isaac Walton from the banks of the river Lee, 
with the hook through his ear. How he would go up, roaring 
and screaming, and thinking the devil had got him ! 

Other joys 
Are but toys. 

We repeat, that if fish were made to be so treated, then we 
were just as much made to be racked and suffocated ; and a foot- 
pad might have argued that old Isaac was made to have his pocket 
picked, and be tumbled into the river. There is no end of 
these idle and selfish beggings of the question, which at last 
argue quite as much against us as for us. And granting 
them, for the sake of argument, it is still obvious, on the very 
same ground, that men were also made to be taught better. 
We do not say, that all anglers are of a cruel nature ; many 
of them, doubtless, are amiable men in other matters. They 



42 THE INDICATOR. 



have only never thought perhaps on that side of the question, 
or been accustomed from childhood to blink it. But once 
thinking, their amiableness and their practice become incom- 
patible ; and if they should wish, on that account, never to 
have thought upon the subject, they would only show, that 
they cared for their own exemption from suffering, and not for 
its diminution in general.* 

* Perhaps the best thing to be said finally about angling is, that not being 
able to determine whether fish feel it very sensibly or otherwise, we ought 
to give them the benefit rather than the disadvantage of the doubt, where 
we can help it ; and our feelings the benefit, where we cannot. 



chap, xii.] LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION. 43 



CHAPTER XII. 

Ludicrous Exaggeration. 

Men of wit sometimes like to pamper a joke into exaggeration ; 
into a certain corpulence of facetiousness. Their relish of the 
thing makes them wish it as large as possible ; and the enjoy- 
ment of it is doubled by its becoming more visible to the eyes of 
others. It is for this reason that jests in company are sometimes 
built up by one hand after another, — " threepiled hyperboles/ 5 — 
till the over-done Babel topples and tumbles down amidst a merry 
confusion of tongues. 

FalstafF was a great master of this art : he loved a joke as large 
as himself; witness his famous account of the men in buckram. 
Thus he tells the Lord Chief Justice, that he had lost his voice 
" with singing of anthems ;" and he calls Bardolph's red nose " a 
perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire light ;" and says it has 
saved him " a thousand marks in links and torches," walking 
with it " in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern." See how he 
goes heightening the account of his recruits at every step : — " You 
would think I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately 
come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. — A mad 
fellow met me on the way and told me I had unloaded all the gib- 
bets and pressed the dead bodies — No eye hath seen such scare- 
crows. — I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat. — 
Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they 
had gyves on ; for indeed I had most of them out of prison. — 
There's but a shirt and a-half in all my company ; — and the half 
shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoul- 
ders like a herald's coat without sleeves." 

An old schoolfellow of ours (who, by the way, was more fond of 
quoting Falstaff than any other of Shakspeare's characters) used 
to be called upon for a story, with a view to a joke of this sort ; it 



44 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xii 

being an understood thing that he had a privilege of exaggeration, 
witSout committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows 
the :ld blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. 
Somebody had been applauded in company for advising his cook 
to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, " because that was 
the way to Turn'em Green ;" upon which Goldsmith is said to 
have gone and repeated the pun at another table in this fashion : 
" John should take those peas, I think, to Hammersmith." "Why 
so, Doctor ?" " Because that is the way to make 'em green." 
Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional 
dressing : " At sight of the dishes of vegetables, Goldsmith, who 
was at his own house, took off the covers, one after another, 
with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them ; 
upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and pro- 
spective satisfaction. ' You are fond of peas, Sir V said one of 
the company. ' Yes, Sir, 5 said Goldsmith, ' particularly so : — I 
eat them all the year round ; — I mean, Sir, every day in the 
season. I do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I 
am.' ' Is there any particular reason, Doctor, 5 asked a gentle- 
man present, ' why you like peas so much, beyond the usual one 
of their agreeable taste?' — 'No, Sir, none whatsoever: — none, 
I assure you' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress 
this fact on his guests) : ' I never heard any particular encomium 
or speech about them from any one else : but they carry their 
own eloquence with them : they are things, Sir, of infinite 
taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional spir- 
its.) 'But, bless me!' he exclaimed, looking narrowly into the 
peas : — ' I fear they are very ill-done : they are absolutely yel- 
low instead of green? (here he put a strong emphasis on green) ; 
' and you know, peas should be emphatically green : — green- 
ness in a pea is a quality as essential as whiteness in a lily. 
The cook has quite spoilt them : — but I'll give the rogue a lec- 
ture, gentlemen, with your permission. 5 Goldsmith then rose 
and rang the bell violently for the cook, who came in ready 
booted and spurred. 'Ha!' exclaimed Goldsmith, 'those boots, 
and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know, Sir, 
what you have done V — 'No, Sir. 5 — ' Why, you have made the 
peas yellow, Sir. Go instantly, and take 'em to Hammer- 



chap, xii.] LUDICROUS EXAGGERATE N. 45 

smith. 5 ' To Hammersmith, Sir V cried the man, all in aston- 
ishment, the guests being no less so : — ' please, Sir, why am I to 
take 'em to Hammersmith?' — ' Because, Sir,' (and here Gold- 
smith looked round with triumphant anticipation) ' that is the 
way to render those peas green.' " 

There is a very humorous piece of exaggeration in Butler's 
Remains, — a collection, by the bye, well worthy of Hudibras, 
and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is 
defrauded of his fame with readers of taste who happen to be 
no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage. 
The piece we allude to is a short description of Holland : 

A country that draws fifty foot of water, 
In which men live as in the hold of nature ; 
And when the sea does in upon them break, 
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak 

That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes, 
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes. 
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored, 
In which they do not live, but go aboard. 

We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to dis- 
cover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the 
great patriot Andrew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and 
excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to 
have been known earlier as an author. He was certainly known 
publicly before him. But in the political poems of Marvell there 
is a ludicrous character of Holland, which might be pronounced 
to be either the copy or the original of Butler's, if in those anti- 
Batavian times the Hollander had not been baited by all the 
wits ; and were it not probable that the unwieldy monotony oi 
his character gave rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in 
many of their fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of But- 
ler's, not in learning or multiplicity of contrasts (for nobody ever 
beat him there), but in a greater variety of them, and in being 
able, from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring gravei 
and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity. 

He thus opens the battery upon our amphibious neighbor : 



46 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xii 

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, 
As but the off-scouring of the British sand ; 
And so much earth as was contributed 
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead ; 
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell, 
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell. 

* H* * * * * * 

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, 
They, with mad labor,* fished the land to shore ; 
And dived as desperately for each piece 
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece ; 
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, 
Less than what building swallows bear away ; 
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl, 
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul. 

He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole : — 

How did they rivet with gigantic piles 

Thorough the centre their new-catched miles ; 

And to the stake a struggling country bound, 

Where barking waves still bait the forced ground ; 

Building their wat'ry Babel far more high 

To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky. 

Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed, 

And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played; 

As if on purpose it on land had come 

To show them what's their Mare Liberumf ; 

A dayly deluge over them does boil ; 

The earth and water play at level-coyl ; 

The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, 

And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest : 

And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw 

Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau. 

Or, as they over the new level ranged, 

For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed. 

Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake, 

Would throw their land away at duck and drake ; 

Therefore necessity, that first made kings, 

Something like government among them brings ; 

* Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come, 
dare — 

" The Gods from above the mad labor behold." 
+ A Free Ocean. 



chap, xii.] LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION. 47 

For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane, 
Among the hungry he that treasures grain, 
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns, 
So rules among the drowned he that drains. 
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands ; 
But who could first discern the rising lands ; 
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak, 
Him they their lord and country's father speak ; 
To make a bank was a great plot of state ; — 
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate. 

We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of 
Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter. 



48 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xiii 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Gilbert! Gilbert! 

The sole idea generally conveyed to us by historians of Thomas 
a Becket is that of a haughty priest, who tried to elevate the 
religious power above the civil. But in looking more narrowly 
into the accounts of him, it appears that for a considerable part 
of his life he was a merry layman, was a great falconer, feaster, 
and patron, as well as man of business ; and he wore all cha- 
racters with such unaffected pleasantness, that he was called the 
Delight of the Western World. 

On a sudden, to everybody's surprise, his friend the king 
(Henry II.), from chancellor made him archbishop; and with 
equal suddenness, though retaining his affability, the new head 
of the English church put off all his worldly graces and plea- 
sures (save and except a rich gown over his sackcloth, and in 
the midst of a gay court, became the most mortified of ascetics. 
Instead of hunting and hawking, he paced a solitary cloister ; 
instead of his wine, he drank fennel-water ; and in lieu of soft 
clothing, he indulged his back in stripes. 

This phenomenon has divided the opinions of the moral critics. 
Some insist that Becket was religiously in earnest, and think the 
change natural to a man of the world, whose heart had been 
struck with reflection. Others see in his conduct nothing but 
ambition. We suspect that three parts of the truth are with the 
latter ; and that Becket, suddenly enabled to dispute a kind of 
sovereignty with his prince and friend, gave way to the new 
temptation, just as he had done to his falconry and fine living. 
But the complete alteration of his way of life, — the enthusiasm 
which enabled him to set up so different a greatness against his 
former one — shows that his character partook at least of as much 
sincerity as would enable him to delude himself in good taste. 



chap, xiii.] GILBERT GILBERT! 49 

In proportion as his very egotism was concerned, it was likely 
that such a man would exalt the gravity and importance of his 
new calling. He had flourished at an earthly court : he now 
wished to be as great a man in the eyes of another ; and worldly 
power, which was at once to be enjoyed and despised by virtue 
of his office, had a zest given to its possession, of which the 
incredulousness of mere insincerity could know nothing. 

Thomas a Becket may have inherited a romantic turn of mind 
from his mother, whose story is a singular one. His father, Gil- 
bert Becket, a flourishing citizen, had been in his youth a soldier 
in the crusades ; and being taken prisoner, became slave to an 
Emir, or Saracen prince. By degrees he obtained the confidence 
of his master, and was admitted to his company, where he met a 
personage who became more attached to him. This was the 
Emir's daughter. Whether by her means or not does not appear, 
but after some time he contrived to escape. The lady with her 
loving heart followed him. She knew, they say, but two words 
of his language, — London and Gilbert ; and by repeating the form- 
er she obtained a passage in a vessel, arrived in England, and found 
her trusting way to the metropolis. She then took to her other 
talisman, and went from street to street pronouncing " Gilbert !" 
A crowd collected about her wherever she went, asking of course 
a thousand questions, and to all she had but one answer — Gilbert ! 
Gilbert ! — She found her faith in it sufficient. Chance, or her 
determination to go through every street, brought her at last to 
the one in which he who had won her heart in slavery, was living 
in good condition. The crowd drew the family to the window; 
his servant recognized her ; ar d Gilbert Becket took to his arms 
and his bridal bed, his far-corn 3 princess, with her solitary fond 
word. 

5 



60 THE INDIC ATOR. [chap. xiv. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Fatal Mistake of Nervous Disorders for Madness. 

Some affecting catastrophes in the public papers induce us to say 
a few words on the mistaken notions which are so often, in our 
opinion, the cause of their appearance. It is much to be wished 
that some physician, truly so called, and philosophically compe- 
tent to the task, would write a work on this subject. We have 
plenty of books on symptoms and other alarming matters, very 
useful for increasing the harm already existing. We believe 
also there are some works of a different kind, if not written in 
direct counteraction ; but the learned authors are apt to be so 
grand and etymological in their title-pages, that they must 
frighten the general understanding with their very advertise- 
ments. 

There is this great difference between what is generally under- 
stood by the word madness, and the nervous or melancholy dis- 
orders, the excess of which is so often confounded with it. Mad- 
ness is a consequence of malformation of the brain, and is by 
no means of necessity attended with melancholy or even ill- 
health. The patient, in the very mi-dst of it, is often strong, 
healthy and even cheerful. On the other hand, nervous disor- 
ders, or even melancholy in its most aggravated state, is nothing 
but the excess of a state of stomach and blood, extremely com- 
mon. The mind no doubt will act upon that state and exas- 
perate it ; but there is great re-action between mind and body ; 
and as it is a common thing for a man in an ordinary fever, or 
fit of the bile, to be melancholy, and even to do or feel inclined 
to do an extravagant thing, so it is as common for him to get 
well and be quite cheerful again. Thus it is among witless peo- 
ple that the true madness will be found. . It is the more intelli- 
gent that are subject to the other disorders ; and a proper use 
of their intelligence will show them what the disorders are. 



chap, xiv.] NERVOUS DISORDERS 51 

But weak treatment may frighten the intelligent. A kind per- 
son, for instance, in a fit of melancholy, may confess that he 
feels an inclination to do some desperate or even cruel thing. 
This is often treated at once as madness, instead of an excess of 
the kind just mentioned ; and the person seeing he is thought 
out of his wits, begins to think himself so, and at last acts as if he 
were. This is a lamentable evil ; but it does not stop here. 
The children or other relatives of the person may become vic- 
tims to the mistake. They think there is madness, as the phrase 
is, "in the family;" and so whenever they feel ill, or meet with 
a misfortune, the thought will prey upon their minds ; and this 
may lead to catastrophes, with which they have really no more 
to do than any other sick or unfortunate people. How many 
persons have committed an extravagance in a brain fever, or 
undergone hallucinations of mind in consequence of getting an 
ague, or taking opium, or fifty other causes ; and yet the mo- 
ment the least wandering of mind is observed in them, others 
become frightened ; their fright is manifested beyond all neces- 
sity ; and the patients and their family must suffer for it. They 
seem to think that no disorder can properly be held a true Chris- 
tian sickness, and fit for charitable interpretation, but where the 
patient has gone regularly to bed, and had curtains, and caudle- 
cups, and nurses abou* him, like a well-behaved respectable sick 
gentleman. But this state of things implies muscular weakness, 
or weakness of that sort which renders the bodily action feeble. 
Now, in nervous disorders, the muscular action may be as strong 
as ever ; and people may reasonably be allowed a world of ill- 
ness, sitting in their chairs, or even walking or running. 

These mistaken pronouncers upon disease ought to be told, 
that when they are thus unwarrantably frightened, they are 
partaking of the very essence of what they misapprehend ; 
for it is fear, in all its various degrees and modifications, which 
is at the bottom of nervousness and melancholy ; not fear in its 
ordinary sense, as opposed to cowardice (for a man who would 
shudder at a bat or a vague idea, may be bold as a lion against 
an enemy), but imaginative fear ; fear either of something known 
or of the patient knows not what ; — a vague sense of terror, — 
an impulse, — an apprehension of ill, — dwelling upon some pain- 



52 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xivT 

ful and worrying thought. Now this suffering is invariably con- 
nected with a weak state of the body in some respects, particu- 
larly of the stomach. Hundreds will be found to have felt it, if 
patients inquire ; but the mind is sometimes afraid of acknow- 
ledging its apprehensions, even to itself; and thus fear brooda 
over and hatches fear. 

These disorders, generally speaking, are greater or less in 
their effects according to the exercise of reason. But do not let 
the word be misunderstood : we should rather say, according to the 
extent of the knowledge. A very imaginative man will indeed 
be likely to suffer more than others ; but if his knowledge is at 
all in proportion, he will also get through his evil better than an 
uninformed man suffering great terrors. And the reason is, that 
he knows how much bodily unhealthiness has to do with it. The 
very words that frighten the unknowing might teach them better, 
if understood. Thus insanity itself properly means nothing but 
unhealthiness or unsoundness. Derangement explains itself, and 
may surely mean very harmless things. Melancholy is com- 
pounded of two words which signify black bile. Hypochondria 
is the name of one of the regions of the stomach, a very instruc- 
tive etymology. And lunacy refers to effects, real or imaginary, 
of particular states of the moon ; which if anything after all, 
are nothing more than what every delicate constitution feels in 
its degree from particular states of the weather : for weather, 
like the tides, is apt to be in such and such a condition, when 
the moon presents such and such a face. 

It has been said, 

Great wits to madness nearly are allied 

It is curious that he who wrote the saying (Dryden) was a 
very sound wit to the end of his life ; while his wife, who was 
of a weak understanding, became insane. An excellent writer 
(Wordsworth) has written an idle couplet about the insanity of 
poets : 

We poets enter on our path with gladness, 

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. 



chap, xiv.] .NERVOUS DISORDERS. 53 

If he did not mean madness in the ordinary sense, he should not 
have written this line ; if he did, he ought not to have fallen, 
in the teeth of his better knowledge, into so vulgar an error. 
There are very few instances of insane poets, or of insane great 
understandings of any sort. Bacon, Milton, Newton, Shaks- 
peare, Cervantes, &c, were all of minds as sound as they were 
great. So it has been with the infinite majority of literary men 
of all countries. If Tasso and a few others were exceptions, 
they were hut exceptions ; and the derangement in these eminent 
men has very doubtful characters about it, and is sometimes 
made a question. It may be pretty safely affirmed, at least, 
upon an examination of it, that had they not been the clever men 
they were, it would have been much worse and less equivocal. 
Collins, whose case was after all one of inanition rather than 
insanity, had been a free liver ; and seems to have been hurt by 
having a fortune left him. Cowper was weak-bodied, and beset 
by Methodists. Swift's body was full of bad humors. He him- 
self attributed his disordered system to the effects of a surfeit of 
fruit on his stomach ; and in his last illness he used to break out 
in enormous boils and blisters. This was a violent effort of 
nature to help and purify the current of his blood, — the main 
object in all such cases. Dr. Johnson, who was subject to mists 
of melancholy, used to fancy he should go mad ; but he never 
did. 

Exercise, conversation, cheerful society, amusements of all 
sorts, or a kind, patient, and gradual helping of the bodily health, 
till the mind be capable of amusement (for it should never fool- 
ishly be told "not to think" of melancholy things, without 
having something done for it to mend the bodily health), — these 
are the cures, the ojily cures, and in our opinion the almost 
infallible cures of nervous disorders, however excessive. Above 
all ihe patient should be told that there has often been an end to 
that torment of one haunting idea, which is indeed a great and 
venerable suffering. Many persons have got over it in a week, 
a few weeks, or a month, some in a few months, some not for 
years, but they have got over it at last. There is a remarkable 
instance of this in the life of our great king Alfred. He was 
seized, says his contemporary biographer, with such a strange 



54 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xjv. 

illness while sitting at table, in the twenty-fifth year (we think) 
of his age, that he shrieked aloud ; and for twenty years after- 
wards this illness so preyed upon him, that the relief of one 
hour was embittered by what he dreaded would come the next. 
His disorder is conjectured by some to have been an internal can- 
cer ; by others, with more probability, the black bile, or melan- 
choly. The physicians of those times knew nothing about it; 
and the people showed at once their ignorance, and their admi- 
ration of the king, by saying that the devil had caused it out of 
jealousy. It was probably produced by anxiety for the state of 
his country ; but the same thing which wounded him may have 
helped to keep him up ; for he had plenty of business to attend 
to, and fought with his own hand in fifty-six pitched battles. 
Now exactly twenty years after, in the forty-fifth year of his 
age (if our former recollection is right) this disorder totally left 
him ; and his great heart was where it ought to be, in a heaven 
of health and calmness. 



chap, xv.] MISTS AND FOGS. 55 



CHAPTER XV. 

Mists and Fogs. 

Fogs and mists, being nothing but vapors which the cold air will 
not suffer to evaporate, must sometimes present a gorgeous 
aspect next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other 
eyes there may be to look down upon them, they may appear 
like masses of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds un- 
risen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this 
article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk 
through the same airy heaps which at other times float over their 
heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting 
sun. 

We do not say, that any one can " hold a fire in his hand" by 
thinking on a fine sunset ; or that sheer imagination of any sort 
can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were 
wrapped round with cold wet paper ; much less to flounder 
through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often 
help itself with agreeable images against disagreeable ones; or 
pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The 
solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck as it were, in the thick 
foggy atmosphere ; the moon just winning her way through it, 
into beams ; nay. the very candles and gas-lights in the shop- 
windows of a misty evening — all have, in our eyes, their agree- 
able varieties of contrast to the surrounding haze. We have 
even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of 
the Strand by St. Clement's, and seen the church, which is a 
poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly grandeur from 
the dark atmosphere ; looking like a tall white mass, mounting 
up interminably into the night overhead. 

The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the inter- 
course between nature and humanity, have in numberless pas- 



56 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xv. 

sages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown 
us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of 
the most striking. When Thetis, in the Iliad (Lib. i., v. 359), 
rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist ; 
like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to sup- 
pose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water , 
and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white- footed 
goddess on the shore. 

When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the 
Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the death of his 
friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, 
who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to ren- 
der his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his 
head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire (Lib. 
xviii., v. 205). He shouts aloud under this preternatural dia- 
dem ; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with 
a strange unnatural cry ; at which the horses of the Trojan war- 
riors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest 
captains perish in the crush. 

A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended 
to earth ; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need 
of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has 
finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the 
court of Antinous, and suddenly appears before the throne. 
This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new 
and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes iEneas issue suddenly 
from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and 
the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Mil- 
ton — but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by 
way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for 
instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is " like a black mist 
low creeping." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon 
their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapors : 

On the ground 
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist 
Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, 
^ And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heel 

Homeward returning. — (Par. Lost, B. xii., v. 626.) 



chap, xv.] MISTS AND FOGS. 57 

Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen 
demi-gods are assembled in Pandsemonium, waiting the return 
of their " great adventurer" from his "search of worlds:" 

He through the midst unmarked, 
In show plebeian angel militant 
Of lowest order, passed ; and from the door 
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible, 
Ascended his high throne ; which, under state 
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end 
Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile 
He sat, and round about him saw unseen. 
At last — as from a cloudy his fulgent head 
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter ; clad 
With what permissive glory since his fall 
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed 
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng 
Bent their aspect ; and whom they wished, beheld, 
Their mighty chief returned. 

There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy 
of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad day-light, are 
suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to 
Apollo ; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, 
holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them 
to an island. 

Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene 
(Book ii.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from 
Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of 
the Odyssey ; but, like all great poets, what he borrows only 
brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. 
It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course 
of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear 
the Syrens ; but the palmer, his companion, dissuades him : 

When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred 
With his dull vapor all that desert has, 
And heaven's chearefull face enveloped, 
That all things one, and one as nothing was, 
And this great universe seemed one confused n ass, 

* Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist 
How to direct theyr way in darkness wide, 



58 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xv 

But feared to wander in that wasteful! mist 
For tombling into mischiefe unespyde : 
Worse is the daunger hidden then descride. 
Suddeinly an innumerable flight 
Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride, 
And with theyr wicked wings them oft did smight, 
And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night. 

Even all the nation of unfortunate 
And fatall birds about them flocked were, 
Such as by nature men abhorre and hate, 
The ill-faced owle, deaths dreadful messengere . 
The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefull drere : 
The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy : 
The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the bere : 
The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy : 
The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny; 

All these, and all that else does horror breed. 
About them flew, and fild their sayles with fear ; 
Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed, 
Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare. 

Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account. It is where 
Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the 
vale of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Cor- 
reggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the 
circumstance ; the head of the father of gods and men coming 
placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very 
benignity of creation. 

The poet who is the most conversant with mists is Ossian, who 
was a native of the north of Scotland or Ireland. The following 
are as many specimens of his uses of mist as we have room for. 
The first is very grand ; the second as happy in its analogy ; the 
third is ghastly, but of more doubtful merit : 

Two Chiefs parted by their King. — They sunk from the king on either 
side, like two columns of morning mist, when the sun rises between them 
on his glittering rocks Dark is their rolling on either side, each towards 
its reedy pool. 

A great Enemy — I love a foe like Cathmor : his soul is great ; his arm 
is strong ; his battles are full of fame. But the little soul is like a vapor 



chap, xv.] MISTS AND FOGS. 59 

that hovers round the marshy lake. It never rises on the green hill, lest the 
winds meet it there. 

A terrible Omen. — A mist rose slowly from the lake. It came, in the 
figure of an aged man, along the silent plain. Its large limbs did not move 
in steps ; for a ghost supported it in mid air. It came towards Selma's hall, 
and dissolved in a shower of blood. 

We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a 
mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly 
passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of 
detail with the most grand and sovereign effect. It is in a lofty 
comparison of the planet Mars looking through morning vapors ; 
the reader will see with what (Purgatorio, c. ii., v. 10). Dante 
and his guide Virgil have just left the infernal regions, and are 
lingering on a solitary sea-shore in purgatory ; which reminds 
us of that still and far-thoughted verse — 

Lone sitting by the shores of old romance. 

But to our English-like Italian. 

Noi eravam lungh' esso '1 mare ancora, &c. 

That solitary shore we still kept on, 

Like men, who musing on their journey, stay 

At rest in body, yet in heart are gone ; 
When lo ! as at the early dawn of day, 

Red Mars looks deepening through the foggy heat, 

Down in the west, far o'er the watery way ; 
So did mine eyes behold (so may they yet) 

A light, which came so swiftly o'er the sea, 

That never wing with such a fervor beat. 
I did but turn to ask what it might be 

Of my sage leader, when its orb had got 

More large meanwhile, and came more gloriously 
And by degrees, I saw I knew not what 

Of white about it ; and beneath the white 

Another. My great master uttered not 
One word, till those first issuing candours bright 

Fanned into wings ; but soon as he had found 

Who was the mighty voyager now in sight, 
He cried aloud, " Dovii, down, upon the ground, 

It is God's Angel." 



60 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvi 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Shoemaker of Veyros, a Portuguese Tradition. 

In the time of the old kings of Portugal, Don John, a natural 
son of the reigning prince, was governor of the town of Veyros, 
in the province of Alentejo. The town was situate (perhaps is 
there still) upon a mountain, at the foot of which runs a river ; 
and at a little distance there was a ford over it, under another 
eminence. The bed of the river thereabouts was so high as to 
form a shallow sandy place ; and in that clear spot of water, the 
maidens of Veyros, both of high rank and humble, used to wash 
their clothes. 

It happened one day, that Don John, riding out with a com- 
pany, came to the spot at the time the young women were so 
employed : and being, says our author, " a young and lusty 
gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs 
of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to 
their work. He passed along the river ; and all his company 
had not gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it 
up, showed her legs somewhat high ; and clapping her hand on 
her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders? 
"Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis."* 

These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado, 
upon the strength of the governor's having gone by, were repeat- 
ed to him when he got home, together with the action that accom- 
panied them : upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of 
the speech so deeply, that he contrived to have the fair speaker 
brought to him in private ; and the consequence was, that our 
lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another 
natural son. 

* An order of knighthood, of which Don John was Master. 



chap, xvi.] THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS. 61 

Ines (for that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a shoe 
maker in Veyros ; a man of very good account, and wealthy 
Hearing how his daughter had been sent for to the young gov 
ernor's house, and that it was her own light behavior that sub- 
jected her to what he was assured she willingly consented to, he 
took it so to heart, that at her return home, she was driven by 
him from the house, with every species of contumely and spurn- 
ing. After this he never saw her more. And to prove to the 
world and to himself, that his severity was a matter of principle, 
and not a mere indulgence of his own passions, he never after- 
wards lay in a bed, nor ate at a table, nor changed his linen, 
nor cut his hair, nails, or beard ; which latter grew to such a 
length, reaching below his knees, that the people used to call him 
Barbadon, or Old Beardy. 

In the meantime, his grandson, called Don Alphonso, not only 
grew to be a man, but was created Duke of Braganza, his 
father Don John having been elected to the crown of Portugal ; 
which he wore after such noble fashion, to the great good of his 
country, as to be surnamed the Memorable. Now the town of 
Veyros stood in the middle of seven or eight others, all belong- 
ing to the young Duke, from whose palace at Villa Viciosa it 
was but four leagues distant. He therefore had good intelligence 
of the shoemaker his grandfather ; and being of a humane and 
truly generous spirit, the accounts he received of the old man's 
way of life made him extremely desirous of paying him a visit. 
He accordingly went with a retinue to Veyros ; and meeting 
Barbadon in the streets, he alighted from his horse, bareheaded, 
and in the presence of that stately company and the people, ask- 
ed the old man his blessing. The shoemaker, astonished at this 
sudden spectacle, and at the strange contrast which it furnished 
to his humble rank, stared in a bewildered manner upon the 
unknown personage, who thus kn^lt to him in the public way ; 
and said, " Sir, do you mock me V " No," answered the Duke ; 
" may God so help me, as I do not : but in earnest I crave I 
may kiss your hand and receive your blessing, for I am your 
grandson, and son to Ines your daughter, conceived by the king, 
my lord and father." No sooner had the shoemaker heard these 
words, than he clapped his hands before his eyes, and said, " God 



62 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvi 

bless me from ever beholding the son of so wicked a daughter as 
mine was ! And yet, forasmuch as you are not guilty of her 
offence, hold ; take my hand and my blessing, in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So saying, 
he laid one of his old hands upon the young man's head, blessing 
him ; but neither the Duke nor his followers could persuade 
him to take the other away from his eyes ; neither would he talk 
with him a word more. In this spirit, shortly after, he died ; 
and just before his death he directed a tomb to be made for him, 
on which were sculptured the tools belonging to his trade, with 
this epitaph : — 

" This sepulchre Barbadon caused to be made 
(Being of Veyros, a shoemaker by his trade), 
For himself and the rest of his race, 
Excepting his daughter Ines in any case." 

The author says, that he has " heard it reported by the 
ancientest persons, that the fourth Duke of Braganza, Don James, 
son to Donna Isabel, sister to the King Don Emanuel, caused 
that tomb to be defaced, being the sepulchre of his fourth grand- 
father."* 

As for the daughter, the conclusion of whose story comes 
lagging in like a penitent, " she continued," says the writer, 
" after she was delivered of that son, a very chaste and virtuous 
woman ; and the king made her commandress of Santos, a most 
honorable place, and very plentiful ; to the which none but prin- 
cesses were admitted, living, as it were, abbesses and princesses 
of a monastery built without the walls of Lisbon, called Santos, 
founded by reason of some martyrs that were martyred there. 
And the religious women of that place have liberty to marry 
with the knights of their order, before they enter into that holy 
profession." 

The rest of our author's remarks are in too curious a spirit 
to be omitted. " In this monastery," he says, " the same Donna 

* It appears by this, that the Don John of the tradition is John the First, 
who was elected king of Portugal, a: d became famous for his great quali- 
ties ; and that his son by the a.Ueged shoemaker's daughter was his succes- 
sor, Alphonso the Fifth. 



chap, xvi.] THE SHOEMAKER OF VEYROS. 63 

Ines died, leaving behind her a glorious reputation for her virtue 
and holiness. Observe, gentle reader, the constancy that this 
Portuguese, a shoemaker, continued in, loathing to behold the 
honorable estate of his grandchild, nor would any more acknow- 
ledge his daughter, having been a lewd woman, for purchasing 
advancement with dishonor. This considered, you will not won- 
der at the Count Julian, that plagued Spain, and executed the 
king Roderigo for forcing his daughter La Cava. The example 
of this shoemaker is especially worthy the noting, and deeply to 
be considered : for, besides, that it makes good our assertion, it 
teaches the higher not to disdain the lower, as long as they be 
virtuous and lovers of honor. It may be that this old man, for 
his integrity, rising from a virtuous zeal, merited that a daugh- 
ter coming by descent from his grandchild, should be made Queen 
of Castile, and the mother of great Isabel, grandmother to the 
Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Ferdinando." 

Alas ! a pretty posterity our shoemaker had, in Philip II. 
and his successors, — a race more suitable to his severity against 
his child, than his blessing upon his grandchild. Old Barbadon 
was a fine fellow too, after his fashion. We do not know how he 
reconciled his unforgiving conduct with his Christianity ; but he 
had enough precedents on that point. What we admire in him 
is, his showing that he acted out of principle, and did not mistake 
passion for it. His crepidarian sculptures indeed are not so well * 
but a little vanity may be allowed to mingle with and soften such 
edge-tools of self-denial, as he chose to handle. His treatment 
of his daughter was ignorant, and in wiser times would have 
been brutal ; especially when it is considered how much the con- 
duct of children is modified by education and other circumstan- 
ces : but then a brutal man would not have accompanied it with 
such voluntary suffering of his own.- Neither did Barbadon 
leave his daughter to take her chance in the wide world, think- 
ing of the evils she might be enduring, only to give a greater 
zest of fancied pity to the contentedness of his cruelty. He knew 
she was well taken care of; and if she was not to have the enjoy- 
ment of his society, he was determined that it should be a very 
uncomfortable one to himself. He knew that she lay on a 
princely bed, while he would have none at all. He knew that 



64 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvi 

she was served upon gold and silver, while he renounced his old 
chestnut table, — the table at which she used to sit. He knew 
while he sat looking at his old beard, and the wilful sordid 
ness of his hands, that her locks and her fair limbs were ob- 
jects of worship to the gallant and the great. And so he setoff 
his destitutions against her over-possession ; and took out the 
punishment he gave her, in revenge upon himself. This was the 
instinct of a man who loved a principle, but hated nobody : — of 
a man who, in a wiser time, would have felt the wisdom of kind- 
ness. Thus his blessing upon his grandchild becomes consistent 
with his cruelty to his child : and his living stock was a fine one 
in spite of him. His daughter showed a sense of the wound she 
had given such a father, by relinquishing the sympathies she 
loved, because they had hurt him : and her son, worthy of such 
a grandfather and such a daughter, and refined into a graceful- 
ness of knowledge by education, thought it no mean thing or 
vulgar to kneel to the grey-headed artisan in the street, and beg 
the blessing of his honest hand. 



chap, xvii.] MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 65 



CHAPTER XV. I. 

More News of Ulysses. 

Talking the other day with a friend* about Dante, ne observed, 
that whenever so great a poet told anything in addition or con- 
tinuation of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as 
classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of 
that characteristic death of Ulysses in one of the books of his 
Inferno, we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be 
glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for. 

We thought this a happy remark, and instantly turned with 
him to the passage in question. The last account of Ulysses in 
the ancient poets, is his sudden re-appearance before the suitors 
at Ithaca. There is something more told of him, it is true, 
before the Odyssey concludes ; but with the exception of his 
visit to his aged father, our memory scarcely wishes to retain it ; 
nor does it controvert the general impression left upon us, that 
the wandering hero is victorious over his domestic enemies ; and 
reposes at last, and for life, in the bosom of his family. 

The lesser poets, however, could not let him alone. Homer 
leaves the general impression upon one's mind, as to the close of 
his life; but there are plenty of obscurer fables about it still. 
We have specimens in modern times of this propensity never to 
have done with a good story ; which is natural enough, though 
not very wise ; nor are the best writers likely to meddle with it. 
Thus Cervantes was plagued with a spurious Quixote ; and our 
circulating libraries have the adventures of Tom Jones in his 
Married State, The ancient writers on the present subject, 
availing themselves of an obscure prophecy of Tiresias, who 
tells Ulysses on his visit to hell, that his old enemy the sea would 
be the death of him at last, bring over the sea Telegonus, his 

* The late Mr. Keats. 
6 



66 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xvii 

son by the goddess Circe, who gets into a scuffle with the Itha- 
cans, and kills his father unknowingly. It is added that Tele- 
gonus afterwards returned to his mother's island, taking Pene- 
lope and her half-brother Telemachus with him ; and here a 
singular arrangement takes place, more after the fashion of a 
modern Catholic dynasty, than an ancient heathen one ; for 
while (Edipus was fated to undergo such dreadful misfortunes 
for marrying his mother without the knowledge of either party, 
Minerva herself comes down from heaven, on the present occa- 
sion, to order Telegonus, the son of Ulysses, to marry his father's 
wife ; the other son at the same time making a suitable match 
with his father's mistress, Circe. Telemachus seems to have 
had the best of this extraordinary bargain, for Circe was a god- 
dess, consequently always young; and yet to perplex these 
windings-up still more, Telemachus is represented by some as 
marrying Circe's daughter, and killing his immortal mother-in- 
law. Nor does the character of the chaste and enduring Pene- 
lope escape in the confusion. Instead of waiting her husband's 
return in that patient manner, she is reported to have been over- 
hospitable to all the suitors ; the consequence of which was a 
son called Pan, being no less a personage than the god Pan him- 
self, or Nature ; a fiction, as Bacon says, " applied very absurd- 
ly and indiscreetly." There are different stories respecting her 
lovers ; but it is reported that when Ulysses returned from Troy, 
he divorced her for incontinence ; and that she fled, and passed 
her latter days in Mantinea. Some even go so far as to say, that 
her father Icarius had attempted to destroy her when young, 
because the oracle had told him that she would be the most dis- 
solute of the family. This was probably invented by the comic 
writers out of a buffoon malignity ; for there are men, so fool- 
ishly incredulous with regard to principle, that the reputation of 
it, even in a fiction, makes them impatient. 

Now it is impossible to say, whether Dante would have left 
Ulysses quietly with Penelope after all his sufferings, had he 
known them as described in Homer. The old Florentine, 
though wilful enough when he wanted to dispose of a modern's 
fate, had great veneration for his predecessors. At all events, 
he was not acquainted with Homer's works. They did not make 



chap, xvii.] MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 67 

their way back into Italy till a little later. But there were 
Latin writers extant, who might have informed h:'m of the other 
stories relative to Ulysses ; and he saw nothing in them to hindei 
him from giving the great wanderer a death of his own. 

He has accordingly, with great attention to nature, made him 
impatient of staying at home, after a life of such adventure and 
excitement. But we will relate the story in his own order. He 
begins it with one of his most romantic pieces of wildness. The 
poet and his guide Virgil are making the best of their difficult 
path along a ridge of the craggy rock that overhangs the eighth 
gulf of hell ; when Dante, looking down, sees the abyss before 
him full of flickering lights, as numerous, he says, as the fire- 
flies which a peasant, reposing on a hill, sees filling the valley, of 
a hot evening. Every flame shot about separately : and he 
knew that some terrible mystery or other accompanied it. As 
he leaned down from the rock, grasping one of the crags, in 
order to look closer, his guide, who perceived his earnestness, 
said, " Within those fires are spirits ; everyone swathed in what 
is burning him." Dante told him, that he had already guessed 
as much ; and pointing to one of them in particular, asked who 
was in that fire which was divided at top, as though it had 
ascended from the funeral pile of the hating Theban brothers. 
" Within that," answered Virgil, " are Diomed and Ulysses, who 
speed together now to their own misery, as they used to do to that 
of others." They were suffering the penalty of the various 
frauds they had perpetrated in concert ; such as the contrivance 
of the Trojan horse, and the theft of the Palladium. Dante 
entreats, that if those who are within the sparkling horror can 
speak, it may be made to come near. Virgil says it shall ; but 
begs the Florentine not to question it himself, as the spirits, being 
Greek, might be shy of holding discourse with him. When the 
flame has come near enough to be spoken to, Virgil addresses 
the " two within one fire ;" and requests them, if he ever deserved 
anything of them as a poet, great or little, that they would not go 
away, till one of them had told him how he came in that extremity. 

At this ; says Dante, the greater horn of the old fire began to 
lap hither and thither, murmuring ; like a flame struggling with 
the wind. The top then, yearning to and fro, like a tongue try- 



08 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xvn. 

ing to speak, threw out a voice, and said : " When I departed 
from Circe, who withdrew me to her for more than a year in 
the neighborhood of Gaieta, before iEneas had so named it, 
neither the sweet company of my son, nor pious affection of my 
old father, nor the long-owed love with which I ought to have 
gladdened Penelope, could conquer the ardor that was in me <o 
become wise in knowledge of the world, of man's vices, and his 
virtue. I put forth into the great open deep with only one bark, 
and the small remaining crew by whom I had not been left. 
I saw the two shores on either side, as far as Spain and Morocco ; 
and the island of Sardinia, and the other isles which the sea 
there bathes round about. Slowly we went, my companions and 
I, for we were old ; till at last we came to that narrow outlet, 
where Hercules set up his pillars, that no man might go further. 
I left Seville on the right hand ; on the other I had left Ceuta. 
O brothers, said I, who through a hundred thousand perils are at 
length arrived at the west, deny not to the short waking day that 
yet remains to our senses, an insight into the unpeopled world, 
setting your backs upon the sun. Consider the stock from which 
ye sprang : ye were not made to live like the brute beasts, but to 
follow virtue and knowledge. I so sharpened my companions 
with this little speech on our way, that it would have been diffi- 
cult for me to have withheld them, if I would. We left the 
morning right in our stern, and made wings of our oars for the 
idle flight, always gaining upon the left. The night now be- 
held all the stars of the other pole ; while our own was so low, 
that it arose not out of the ocean floor. Five times the light had 
risen underneath the moon, and five times fallen, since we put 
forth upon the great deep ; when we descried a dim mountain in 
the distance, which appeared higher to me than any I had seen 
ever before. We rejoiced, and as soon mourned : for there 
sprung a whirlwind from the new land, and struck the foremost 
frame of our vessel. Three times, with all the waters, it whirled 
us round ; at the fourth it dashed the stern up in air, and the 
prow downwards ; till, as seemed fit to others, the ocean closed 
above our heads." 

Tre volte il fe girar con tutte P acque : 
A la quarta levar 1 i poppa in suso, 






chap, xvii.] MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES. 69 

E la prora ire i: giw, come altrui piacque } 
Infin ch '1 mar fu sopra noi richiuso. 

Why poor Ulysses should find himself in hell after his lmrner 
sion, and be condemned to a swathing of eternal fire, while St. 
Dominic, who deluged Christianity with fire and blood, is called 
a Cherubic Light, the Papist, not the poet, must explain. He 
puts all the Pagans in hell, because, however good some of them 
may have been, they lived before Christ, and could not worship 
God properly — (debitamente). But he laments their state, and 
represents them as suffering a mitigated punishment ; they only 
live in a state of perpetual desire without hope (sol di tanto off est) ! 
A sufficing misery, it must be allowed ; but compared with the 
horrors he fancies for heretics and others, undoubtedly a great 
relief. Dante, throughout his extraordinary work, gives many 
evidences of great natural sensibility ; and his countenance, as 
handed down to us, as well as the shade-struck gravity of his 
poetry, shows the cuts and disquietudes of heart he must have 
endured. But unless the occasional hell of his own troubles, and 
his consciousness of the mutability of all things, helped him to 
discover the brevity of individual suffering as a particular, and 
the lastingness of nature's benevolence as a universal, and thus 
gave his poem an intention beyond what appears upon the sur- 
face, we must conclude, that a bigoted education, and the fierce 
party politics in which he was a leader and sufferer, obscured 
the greatness of his spirit. It is always to be recollected, how- 
ever, as Mr. Coleridge has observed somewhere in other words, 
that when men consign each other to eternal punishment and 
such-like horrors, their belief is rather a venting of present im- 
patience and dislike, than anything which they take it for. The 
fiercest Papist or Calvinist only flatters himself (a strange flat- 
tery, too !) that he could behold a fellow-creature tumbling and 
shrieking about in eternal fire. He would begin shrieking him- 
self in a few minutes ; and think that he and all heaven ought to 
pass away, rather than that one such agony should continue. 
Tertullian himself, when he longed to behold the enemies of his 
faith burning and liquefying, only meant, without knowing it, 
that he was in an excessive rage at not convincing everybody 
that read him. 



70 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xviii 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Far Countries. 

Imagination, though no mean thing, is not a proud one. If it 
looks down from its wings upon common-places, it only the more 
perceives the vastness of the region about it. The infinity into 
which its flight carries it, might indeed throw back upon it a too 
great sense of insignificance, did not Beauty or Moral Justice, 
with its equal eye, look through that blank aspect of power, and 
re-assure it ; showing it that there is a power as much above 
power itself, as the thought that reaches to all, is to the hand that 
can touch only thus far. 

But we do not wish to get into this tempting region of specula- 
tion just now. We only intend to show the particular instance 
in which imagination instinctively displays its natural humility ; 
we mean, the fondness which imaginative times and people have 
shown for what is personally remote from them ; for what is 
opposed to their own individual consciousness, even in range of 
space, in farness of situation. 

There is no surer mark of a vain people than their treating 
other nations with contempt, especially those of whom they know 
least. It is better to verify the proverb, and take everything 
unknown for magnificent, than predetermine it to be worthless. 
The gain is greater. The instinct is more judicious. When 
we mention the French as an instance, we do not mean to be 
invidious. Most nations have their good as well as bad features. 
In Vanity Fair there are many booths. 

The French, not long ago, praised one of their neighbors so 
highly, that the latter is suspected to have lost as much modesty, 
as the former gained by it. But they did this as a set-off 
against their own despots and bigots. When they again 
became the greatest power in Europe, they had a relapse of 
their old egotism The French, though an amiable and intelli- 



chaf xviii.] FAR COUNTRIES. 71 

gent people, are not an imaginative one. The greatest height 
they go is in a balloon. They get no farther than France, let 
them go where they will. They " run the great circle and are 
s'ill at home," like a squirrel in his rolling cage. Instead of 
going to Nature in their poetry, they would make her come to 
them, and dress herself at their last new toilet. In philosophy 
and metaphysics, they divest themselves of gross prejudices, 
and then think they are in as graceful a state of nakedness as 
Adam and Eve. 

At the time when the French had this fit upon them of prais- 
ing the English (which was nevertheless the honester one of the 
two), they took to praising the Chinese for numberless unknown 
qualities. This seems a contradiction to the near-sightedness 
we speak of : but the reason they praised them was, that the 
Chinese had the merit of religious toleration : a great and extra- 
ordinary one certainly, and not the less so for having been, to 
all appearance, the work of one man. All the romance of 
China, such as it was, — anything in which they differed from 
the French, — their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great 
Wall, — was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the 
philosophers. 

It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have 
selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contempt- 
uous of others ; or at least more self-satisfied and unimagina- 
tive. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious ; and have a 
great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit them. 
But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their 
general character, that they should pay strangers even this 
equivocal compliment ; for under a prodigious mask of polite- 
ness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations, 
whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of the 
Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in 
us most is that of gun-making, and of the East-Indian passage. 
When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they 
inquired for China ; and on finding that it only made a little 
piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They 
thought that it was the mavn territory in the middle, the apple 
of the world's eye. 



72 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xviii. 

On the other hand, the most imaginative nations, in their 
highest times, have had a respect for remote countries. It is a 
mistake to suppose that the ancient term barbarian, applied to 
foreigners, suggested the meaning we are apt to give it. It 
gathered some such insolence with it in the course of time : but 
the more intellectual Greeks venerated the countries from which 
they brought the elements of their mythology and philosophy. 
The philosopher travelled into Egypt, like a son to see his 
father. The merchant heard in Phoenicia the far-brought sto- 
ries of other realms, which he told to his delighted countrymen. 
It is supposed, that the mortal part of Mentor in the Odyssey was 
drawn from one of these voyagers. When Anacharsis the Scy- 
thian was reproached with his native place by an unworthy 
Greek, he said, " My country may be a shame to me, but you 
are a shame to your country." Greece had a lofty notion of 
the Persians and the Great King, till Xerxes came over to 
teach it better, and betrayed the softness of their skulls. 

It was the same with the Arabians, at the time when they had 
the accomplishments of the world to themselves ; as we see by 
their delightful tales. Everything shines with them in the dis- 
tance, like a sunset. What an amiable people are their Per- 
sians ! What a wonderful place is the island of Serendib ! 
You would think nothing could be finer than the Caliph's city 
of Bagdat, till you hear of u Grand Cairo ;" and how has that 
epithet and that name towered in the imagination of all those, 
who have not had the misfortune to see the modern city ? Sind- 
bad was respected, like Ulysses, because he had seen so many 
adventures and nations. So was Aboulfaouris the Great Voy- 
ager, in the Persian Tales. His very name sounds like a 
wonder. 

With many a tempest had his beard been shaken. 

It was one of the workings of the great Alfred's mind, to 
know about far-distant countries. There is a translation by 
him of a book of geography ; and he even employed people to 
travel : a great stretch ?f intellectual munificence for those 
times. About the same period, Haroun al Raschid (whom our 



chap, xviii.] FAR COUNTRIES. 



manhood is startled to find almost a less real person than we 
thought him, for his very reality) wrote a letter to the Emperor 
of the West, Charlemagne. Here is Arabian and Italian 
romance, shaking hands in person. 

The Crusades pierced into a new world of remoteness. We 
do not know whether those were much benefited, who took part 
in them ; but for the imaginative person remaining at home, the 
idea of going to Palestine must have been like travelling into a 
supernatural world. W^hen the campaign itself had a good 
effect, it must have been of a very fine and highly-tempered 
description. Chaucer's Knight had been 

Sometime with the lord of Palatie 

Agen another hethen in Turkie : 

And evermore he had a sovereign price : 

And though that he was worthy, he was wise, 

And of his port as meek as is a mayde. 

How like a return from the moon must have been the re-ap- 
pearance of such travellers as Sir John Mandevile, Marco Polo, 
and William de Rubruquis, with their news of Prester John, the 
Great Mogul, and the Great Cham of Tartary ! The long-lost 
voyager must have been like a person consecrated in all the 
quarters of heaven. His staff and his beard must have looked 
like* relics of his former self. The Venetians, who were some 
of the earliest European travellers, have been remarked, among 
their other amiable qualities, for their great respect for stran- 
gers. The peculiarity of their position, and the absence of so 
many things which are common-places to other countries, such 
as streets, horses, and coaches, add, no doubt, to "his feeling. 
But a foolish or vain people would only feel a contempt for 
what they did not possess. Milton, in one of those favorite pas- 
sages of his, in which he turns a nomenclature into such grand 
meaning and music, shows us whose old footing he had delight- 
ed to follow. How he enjoys the distance ; emphatically using 
the words far , farthest, and utmost! 

— Embassies from regions far remote, 
In various habits, on the Appian road, 
. Or on the Emilian ; some from farthest south> 



74 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xviii 

Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, 

Meroe, Nilotick Isle ; and more to west 

The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea ; 

From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these ; 

From India and the golden Chersonese, 

And utmost Indian isle Taprobane. — Par ad. Meg., b. iv. 

One of our main helps to our love of remoteness in general, is 
the associations we connect with it of peace and quietness. 
Whatever there may be at a distance, people feel as if they should 
escape from the worry of their local cares. " O that I had 
wings like a dove! then would I fly away and be at rest." 
The word far is often used wilfully in poetry, to render distance 
still more distant. An old English song begins — 

In Irelande farre over the sea 
There dwelt a bonny king. 

Thomson, a Scotchman, speaking of the western isles of his own 
country, has that delicious line, full of a dreary yet lulling 
pleasure ; — 

As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles, 
Placed far amid the melancholy main. 

In childhood, the total ignorance of the world, especially when 
we are brought up in some confined spot, renders everything be- 
yond the bounds of our dwelling a distance and a romance. 
Mr. Lamb, in his Recollections of Christ's Hospital, says that he 
remembers when some half-dozen of his school-fellows set 
off, " without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition to 
find out Philip Quarll's Island." We once encountered a set of 
boys as romantic. It was at no greater distance than at the foot 
of a hill near Hampstead ; yet the spot was so perfectly Cisal- 
pine to them, that two of them came up to us with looks of hush- 
ing eagerness, and asked " whether, on the other side of that 
hill, there were not robbers;" to which, the minor adventurer 
of the two added, u and some say serpents." They had all got 
bows and arrows, and were evidently hovering about the place, 
betwixt daring and apprehension, as on the borders of some wild 



chap, xyiii.] FAR COUNTRIES. 



region. We smiled to think which it was that husbanded their 
suburb wonders to more advantage, they or we : for while they 
peopled the place with robbers and serpents, we were peopling 
it with sylvans and fairies. 

" So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man : 
So bo it when I shall grow old; 

Or let me die ! 
The child is father to the man ; 
And J to be 

Bound eacl y natural piety." 



76 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xix. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

A Tale for a Chimney Corner. 

A man who does not contribute his quota of grim story now-a- 
days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters. He is 
bound to wear a death's head, as part of his insignia. If he 
does not frighten everybody, he is nobody. If he does not shock 
the ladies, what can be expected of him ? 

We confess we think very cheaply of these stories in general. 
A story, merely horrible or even awful, which contains no senti- 
ment elevating to the human heart and its hopes, is a mere ap- 
peal to the least judicious, least healthy, and least masculine of 
our passions, — fear. They whose attention can be gravely ar- 
rested by it, are in a fit state to receive any absurdity with re- 
spect ; and this is the reason, why less talents are required to 
enforce it, than in any other species of composition. With this 
opinion of such things, we may be allowed to say, that we would 
undertake to write a dozen horrible stories in a day, all of which 
should make the common worshippers of power, who were not 
in the very healthiest condition, turn pale. We would tell of 
Haunting Old Women, and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean 
Hands, and Empusas on one Leg, and Ladies growing Longer 
and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through Key-holes, 
and Plaintive Heads, and Shrieking Statues, and Shocking 
Anomalies of Shape, and Things which when seen drove peop.e 
mad ; and Indigestion knows what besides. But who would 
measure talents with a leg of veal, or a German sausage ? 

Mere grimness is as easy as grinning ; but it requires some- 
thing to put a hardsome face on a story. Narratives become 
of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like 
offences, particularly of blood and wounds. A child has a rea- 
sonable respect for a Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, because all 



chap, xix.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 77 

images whatsoever of pain and terror are new and fearful to 
his inexperienced age : but sufferings merely physical (unless 
sublimated like those of Philoctetes) are common-places to a 
grown man. Images, to become awful to him, must be removed 
from the grossness of the shambles. A death's-head was a 
respectable thing in the hands of a poring monk, or of a nun 
compelled to avoid the idea of life and society, or of a hermit 
already buried in the desert. Holbein's Dance of Death, in 
which every grinning skeleton leads along a man of rank, from 
the pope to the gentleman, is a good Memento Mori ; but there 
the skeletons have an air of the ludicrous and satirical. If we 
were threatened with them in a grave way, as spectres, we 
should have a right to ask how they could walk about without 
muscles. Thus many of the tales written by such authors as 
the late Mr. Lewis, who wanted sentiment to give him the heart 
of truth, are quite puerile. When his spectral nuns go about 
bleeding, we think they ought in decency to have applied to 
some ghost of a surgeon. His little Grey Men, who sit munch- 
ing hearts, are of a piece with fellows that eat cats for a wager. 

Stories that give mental pain to no purpose, or to very little 
purpose compared with the unpleasant ideas they excite of human 
nature, are as gross mistakes, in their way, as these, and twenty 
times as pernicious : for the latter become ludicrous to grown 
people. They originate also in the same extremes, of callous- 
ness, or of morbid want of excitement, as the others. But more 
of these hereafter. Our business at present is with things ghastly 
and ghostly. 

A ghost story, to be a good one, should unite, as much as possi- 
ble, objects such as they are in life, with a preternatural spirit. 
And to be a perfect one, — at least to add to the other utility of 
excitement a moral utility, — they should imply some great sen- 
timent, — something that comes out of the next world to remind 
us of our duties in this ; or something that helps to carry on the 
idea of our humanity into after life, even when we least think we 
shall take it with us. When " the buried majesty of Den- 
mark " revisits earth to speak to his son Hamlet, he comes armed, 
as he used to be, in his complete steel. His visor is raised ; and 



78 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xix. 

the same fine face is there ; only, in spite of his punishing errand 
and his own sufferings, with 

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. 

When Donne the poet, in his thoughtful eagerness to reconcile 
life and death, had a figure of himself painted in a shroud, and 
laid by his bedside in a coffin, he did a higher thing than the 
monks and hermits with their skulls. It was taking his humanity 
with him into the other world, not affecting to lower the sense of it 
by regarding it piecemeal or in the frame-work. Burns, in his 
Tarn O'Shanter, shows the dead in their coffins after the same 
fashion. He does not lay bare to us their skeletons or refuse, 
things with which we can connect no sympathy or spiritual won- 
der. They still are flesh and body to retain the one ; yet so 
look and behave, inconsistent in their very consistency, as to 
excite the other. 

Coffins stood round like open presses, 
Which showed the dead in their last dresses : 
And by some devilish cantrip sleight, 
Each, in his cauld hand, held a light. 

Re-animation is perhaps the most ghastly of all ghastly things, 
uniting as it does an appearance of natural interdiction from the 
next world, with a supernatural experience of it. Our human 
consciousness is jarred out of its self-possession. The extremes 
of habit and newness, of common-place and astonishment, meet 
suddenly, without the kindly introduction of death and change ; 
and the stranger appals us in proportion. When the account 
appeared the other day in the newspapers of the galvanized dead 
body, whose features as well as limbs underwent such contortions, 
that it seemed as if it were about to rise up, one almost expected to 
hear, for the first time, news of the other world. Perhaps the 
most appalling figure in Spenser is that of Maleger: (Fairy 
Queene, b. II., c. xi.) 

Upon a tygre swift and fierce he rode, 
That as the winde ran underneath his lode, 
Whiles his long legs nigh raught unto the ground • 



chap, xix.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 79 

Full large he was of limbe, and shoulders brode, 
But of such subtile substance and unsound, 
That like a ghost he seemed, whose grave-clothes were unbound. 

Mr. Coleridge, in that voyage of his to the brink of all unut- 
terable things, the Ancient Mariner (which works out, however, 
a fine sentiment), does not set mere ghosts or hobgoblins to man 
the ship again, when its crew are dead ; but re-animates, for a 
while, the crew themselves. There is a striking fiction of this 
sort in Sale's notes upon the Koran. Solomon dies during the 
building of the temple, but his body remains leaning on a staS 
and overlooking the workmen, as if it were alive ; till a worm 
gnawing through the prop, he falls down. — The contrast of the 
appearance of humanity with something mortal or supernatural, 
is always the more terrible in proportion as it is complete. In 
the pictures of the temptations of saints and hermits, where the 
holy person is surrounded, teazed, and enticed, with devils and 
fantastic shapes, the most shocking phantasm is that of the beau- 
tiful woman. To return also to the poem above-mentioned. 
The most appalling personage in Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mari- 
ner is the Spectre-woman who is called Life-in-Death. He ren- 
ders the most hideous abstraction more terrible than it could 
otherwise have been, by embodying it in its own reverse. 
" Death " not only " lives " in it ; but the " unutterable " be- 
comes uttered. To see such an unearthly passage end in such 
earthliness, seems to turn common-place itself into a sort of 
spectral doubt. The Mariner, after describing the horrible calm, 
and the rotting sea in which the ship was stuck, is speaking of a 
strange sail which he descried in the distance : 

The western wave was all a-flame, 
The day was well-nigh done ! 
Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad bright sun ; 
When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the sun. 

And straight the sun was flecked witt bars 
(Heaven's Mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon-grate he peefd, 
With broad and burning face. 



80 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xix 

Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
How fast she nears and nears ! 
Are those her sails that glance in the sun 
Like restless gossameres ? 

Are those her ribs, through which the sun 
Did peer, as through a grate ? 
And is that Woman all her crew ? 
Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Is Death that Woman's mate ? 

Her lips were red, her looks were free, 
Her locks were yellow as gold, 
Her skin was as white as leprosy, 
The Night-Mare Life-in-Death was she, 
Who thicks man's blood with cold. 

But we must come to Mr. Coleridge's story with our subtlest 
imaginations upon us. Now let us put our knees a little nearer 
the fire, and tell a homelier one about Life in Death. The 
groundwork of it is in" Sandys'. Commentary upon Ovid, and 
quoted from Sabinus.* 

A gentleman of Bavaria, of a noble family, was so afflicted 
at the death of his wife, that unable to bear the company of any 
other person, he gave himself up to a solitary way of living. 
This was the more remarkable in him, as he had been a man of 
jovial habits, fond of his wine and visitors, and impatient of 
having his numerous indulgences contradicted. But in the 
same temper perhaps might be found the cause of his sorrow ; 
for though he would be impatient with his wife, as with others, 
yet his love for her was one of the gentlest wills he had ; and 
the sweet and unaffected face which she always turned upon his 
anger, might have been a thing more easy for him to trespass 
upon while living, than to forget, when dead and gone. His 
very anger towards her, compared with that towards others, was 
a relief to him. It was rather a wish to refresh himself in the 
balmy feeling of her patience, than to make her unhappy her- 
self, or to punish her, as some would have done, for that virtuous 
contrast to his own vice. 

* The Saxon Latin poet, we presume, professor of belles-lettres at Frank- 
fort. We know nothing of him except from a biographical dictionary. 



chap, xix.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 81 

But whether he bethought himself, after her death, that this 
was a very selfish mode of loving ; or whether, as some thought, 
he had wearied out her life with habits so contrary to her own ; 
or whether, as others reported, he had put it to a fatal risk by 
some lordly piece of self-will, in consequence of which she had 
caught a fever on the cold river during a night of festivity ; he 
surprised even those who thought that he loved her, by the ex- 
treme bitterness of his grief. The very mention of festivity, 
though he was patient for the first day or two, afterwards threw him 
into a passion of rage ; but by degrees even his rage followed 
his other old habits. He was gentle, but ever silent. He ate 
and drank but sufficient to keep him alive ; and he used to spend^ 
the greater part of the day in the spot where his wife wa£ 
buried. 

He was going there one evening, in a very melancholy man- 
ner, with his eyes turned towards the ^ajrth, and had just entered 
the rails of the burial-ground, when he^bas accosted by the mild 
voice of somebody coming to meet him. "It is a blessed even- 
ing, Sir," said the voice. The gentleman looked up. Nobody 
but himself was allowed to be in the place at that hour ; and 
yet he saw, with astonishment, a young chorister approaching 
him. He was going to express some wonder, when, he said, the 
modest though assured look of the boy, and the extreme beauty 
of his countenance, which glowed in the setting sun befpre him, 
made an irresistible addition to the singular sweetness of his 
voice : and he asked him with an involuntary calmness, and a 
gesture of respect, not what he did there, but what he wished. 
" Only to wish you all good things," answered the stranger, who 
had now come up, " and to give you this letter." The gentle- 
man took the letter, and saw upon it, with a beating yet scarcely 
bewildered heart, the handwriting of his wife. He raised his 
eyes again to speak to the boy, but he was gone. He cast them 
far and near round the place, but there were no traces of a pas- 
senger. He then opened the letter ; and by the divine light of 
the setting sun, read these words : 

" To my dear husband, who sorrows for his wife : 

" Otto, my husband, the soul you regret so is returned. You 



82 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xix 

will know the truth of this, and be prepared with calmness to 
see it, by the divineness of the messenger, who has passed you. 
You will find me sitting in the public walk, praying for you : 
praying, that you may never more give way to those gusts of 
passion, and those curses against others, which divided us, 
" This, with a warm hand, from the living Bertha." 

Otto (for such, it seems, was the gentleman's name) went in- 
stantly, calmly, quickly, yet with a sort of benumbed being, to 
the public walk. He felt, but with only a half-consciousness ; as 
if he glided without a body. But all his spirit was awake, eager, 
-intensely conscious. It seemed to him as if there had been but 
two things in the world — Life and Death ; and that Death was 
dead. All else appeared to have been a dream. He had awaked 
from a waking state, and found himself all eye, and spirit, and 
locomotion. He said to JMmself, once, as he went : " This is not 
a dream. I will ask my great ancestors to-morrow to my new 
bridal feast, for they are alive." Otto had been calm at first, 
but something of old and triumphant feelings seemed again to 
come over him. Was he again too proud and confident ? Did 
his earthly humors prevail again, when he thought them least 
upon him ? We shall see. 

The Bavarian arrived at the public walk. It was full of peo- 
ple with their wives and children, enjoying the beauty of the 
evening. Something like common fear came over him, as he 
went in and out among them, looking at the benches on each side. 
It happened that there was only one person, a lady, sitting upon 
them. She had her veil down ; and his being underwent a 
fierce but short convulsion, as he went near her. Something 
had a little baffled the calmer inspiration of the angel that had 
accosted him : for fear prevailed at the instant, and Otto passed 
on. He returned before he had reached the end of the walk, 
and approached the lady again. She was still sitting in the same 
quiet posture, only he thought she looked at him. Again he 
passed her. On his second return, a grave and sweet courage 
came upon him, and in an under but firm tone of inquiry, he said, 
6 Bertha ?" — " I thought you had forgotten me," said that well- 
known and mellow voice, which he had seemed as far from ever 



chap, xix.] A TALE FOR A CHIMNEY CORNER. 83 

hearing again as earth is from heaven. He took her hand, which 
grasped his in turn ; and they walked home in silence together, 
the arm, which was wound within his, giving warmth for warmth. 

The neighbors seemed to have a miraculous want of wonder 
at the lady's re-appearance. Something was said about a mock 
funeral, and her having withdrawn from his company for awhile ; 
but visitors came as before, and his wife returned to her house- 
hold affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale 
and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before ; 
and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great inter- 
nal thought, than of unhappiness. 

For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper 
which he acquired. His fortunes flourished beyond his earliest 
ambition ; the most amiable as well as noble persons of the dis- 
trict were frequent visitors ; and people said, that to be at Otto's 
house, must be the next thing to being m heaven. But by degrees 
his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented im- 
patience on his wife ; but he again began to show, that the dis- 
quietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary 
thing, in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that 
his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, so 
he held himself secure if he treated her well ; or whether he was 
at all times rather proud of her, than fond ; or whatever was the 
cause which again set his antipathies above his sympathies, cer- 
tain it was, that his old habits returned upon him ; not so often, 
indeed, but with greater violence and pride when they did. These 
were the only tknes, at which his wife was observed to show any 
ordinary symptoms of uneasiness. 

At length, one day, some strong rebuff which he had received 
from an alienated neighbor threw him into such a transport of 
rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying 
with a loud voice — " This treatment to me too ! To me ! To 

me, who if the world knew all" At these words his wife, who 

had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary 
earnestness in the face, suddenly glided from the room. He 
and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb 
horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly ; 
but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After 



84 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xix. 

a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He 
made a movement of despair ; but they went. There was a 
short passage, which turned to the right into her favorite room. 
They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no 
answer. At last one of them gently opened it ; and looking in, 
they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was 
the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather 
to be in the middle of the room ; only the face was towards the 
fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but 
received no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still 
received none. The figure stood dumb and unmoved. At last, 
one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. 
The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of 
a face. The clothes were standing upright by themselves. 

That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might 
be so, to moulder away. It was called the Room of the Lady's 
Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long unin- 
habited, and at length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. 
As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and 
child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since ; 
and nobody would venture to go near him, but a man who had 
the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that 
the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the 
gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who 
would accept them ; for most of the neighbors held th£m in 
horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to 
let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see 
his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears 
in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it ; and the matter 
was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, 
said one day that he would have a child of his own on purpose. 
His employer, however, died in a day or two. They did not 
believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, 
looking upon the latter as a sort of Ogre, and upon his agent as 
little better, though a good-natured looking earnest kind of per- 
son. It was said many years after, that this man had been a 
friend of the Bavarian's when young, and had been deserted by 
him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might do. 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 85 



CHAPTER XX. 

Thieves, Ancient and Modern. 

Having met in the Harleian Miscellany with an account of a 
pet thief of ours, the famous Du Vail, who flourished in the time 
of Charles the Second, and wishing to introduce him worthily to 
the readers, it has brought to mind such a number of the light- 
fingered gentry, his predecessors, that we almost feel hustled by 
the thoughts of them. Our subject, we may truly fear, will run 
away with us. We feel beset, like poor Tasso in his dungeon ; 
and are not sure that our paper will not suddenly be conveyed 
away from under our pen. Already we miss some excellent 
remarks, which we should have made in this place. If the 
reader should meet with any of that kind hereafter, upon the like 
subject, in another man's writings, twenty to one they are stolen 
from us, and ought to have enriched this our plundered exor- 
dium. He that steals an author's purse, may emphatically be 
said to steal trash ; but he that filches from him his good things 

Alas, we thought our subject would be running away with 

us. We must keep firm. We must put something heavier in 
our remarks, as the little thin Grecian philosopher used to put 
lead in his pockets, lest the wind should steal him. 

The more ruffianly crowd of thieves should go first, as 
pioneers ; but they can hardly be looked upon as progenitors of 
our gentle Du Vail ; and besides, with all their ferocity, some 
of them assume a grandeur, from standing in the remote shadows 
of antiquity. There was the famous son, for instance, of Vul- 
can and Medusa, whom Virgil calls the dire aspect of half-human 
Cacus — Semihominis Cacifacies dira. (JEneid, B.VIIL, V, 194.) 
He was the raw-head-and-bloody- bones of ancient fable. He 
lived in a cave by Mount Aventine, breathing out fiery smoke, 
and haunting king Evander's highway like the Apollyon of 
Pilgrim's Progress. 



86 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

Semperque recenti 
Csede tepebat humus ; foribusque adfixa superbis 
Ora virum tristi pendebant pallida tabo. 

The place about was ever in a plash 

Of steaming blood ; and o'er the insulting door 

Hung pallid human heads, defaced with dreary gore. 

He stole some of the cows of Hercules, and dragged them 
backwards into his cave to prevent discovery ; but the oxen 
happening to low, the cows answered them ; and the demigod, 
detecting the miscreant in his cave, strangled him after a hard 
encounter. This is one of the earliest sharping tricks upon 
record. 

Autolycus, the son of Mercury (after whom Shakspeare 
christened his merry rogue in the Winter's Tale), was a thief 
suitable to the greater airiness of his origin. He is said to have 
performed tricks which must awake the envy even of horse- 
dealers ; for in pretending to return a capital horse which he 
had stolen, he palmed upon the owners a sorry jade of an ass ; 
which was gravely received by those flats of antiquity. Another 
time he went still further ; for having conveyed away a hand- 
some bride, he sent in exchange an old lady elaborately hideous ; 
yet the husband did not find out the trick till he had got off. 

Autolycus himself, however, was outwitted by Sisyphus, the 
son of iEolus. Autolycus was in the habit of stealing his 
neighbors' cattle, and altering the marks upon them. Among 
others he stole some from Sisyphus ; but notwithstanding his 
usual precautions, he was astonished to find the latter come and 
pick out his oxen, as if nothing had happened. He had marked 
them under the hoof. Autolycus, it seems, had the usual gene- 
rosity of genius ; and was so pleased with this evidence of supe- 
rior cunning, that some say he gave him in marriage his daugh- 
ter Anticlea, who was afterwards the wife of Laertes, the father 
of Ulysses. According to others, however, he only favored him 
with his daughter's company for a time, a fashion not yet extinct 
in some primitive countries ; and it was a reproach made against 
Ulysses, that Laertes was only his pretended, and Sisyphus his 
real father. Sisyphus has the credit of being the greatest knave 
of antiquity. His famous pun'shment in hell, of being compelled 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 87 

to roll a stone up a hill to all eternity, and seeing it always go 
down again, is attributed by some to a characteristic trait, which 
he could not help playing off upon Pluto. It was supposed by 
the ancients, that a man's ghost wandered in a melancholy man- 
ner upon the banks of the Styx, as long as his corpse remained 
without burial. Sisyphus on his death-bed purposely charged his 
wife to leave him unburied; and then begged Pluto's permission 
to go back to earth, on his parole, merely to punish her for so 
scandalous a neglect. Like the lawyer, however, who contrived 
to let his hat fall inside the door of heaven, and got St. Peter's 
permission to step in for it, Sisyphus would not return : and so 
when Pluto had him again, he paid him for the trick with setting 
him upon this everlasting job. 

The exploits of Mercury himself, the god of cunning, may be 
easily imagined to surpass everything achieved by profaner 
hands. Homer, in the hymn to his honor, has given a delight- 
ful account of his prematurity in swindling. He had not been 
born many hours before he stole Vulcan's tools, Mars' sword, 
and Jupiter's sceptre. He beat Cupid in a wrestling bout on 
the same day ; and Venus caressing him for his conquest, he 
returned the embrace by filching away her girdle. He would 
also have stolen Jupiter's thunderbolts, but was afraid of burn- 
ing his fingers. On the evening of his birth-day, he drove off 
the cattle of Admetus, which Apollo was tending. The good- 
humored god of wit endeavored to frighten him into restoring 
them ; but could not help laughing when, in the midst of his 
threatenings, he found himself without his quiver. 

The history^of thieves is to be found either in that of romance, 
or in the details of the history of cities. The latter have not 
come down to us from the ancient world, with some exceptions 
in the comic writers, immaterial to our present purpose, and in 
the loathsome rhetoric of Petronius. The finest thief in old his- 
tory is the pirate who made that famous answer to Alexander, 
in which he said that the conqueror was only the mightier thief 
of the two. The story of the thieving architect in Herodotus 
we will tell another time. We can call to mind no othei 
thieves in the Greek and Latin writers (always excepting politi- 
cal ones) except some paltry fellows who stole napkins at din- 






38 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

ner; and the robbers in Apuleius, the precursors of those in Gil 
Bias. When we come, however, to the times of the Arabians 
and of chivalry, they abound in all their glory, both great and 
small. Who among us does not know by heart the story of the 
never-to-be-forgotten Forty Thieves, with their treasure in the 
green wood, their anxious observer, their magical opening of 
the door, their captain, their concealment in the jar, and the 
scalding oil, that, as it were, extinguished them groaning, one 
by one ? Have we not all ridden backwards and forwards with 
them to the wood a hundred times ? — watched them, with fear and 
trembling, from the tree ? — sown up, blindfolded, the four 
quarters of the dead body ? — and said, " Open Sesame," to 
every door at school ? May we ride with them again and again • 
or we shall lose our appetite for some of the best things in the 
world. 

We pass over those interlopers in our English family, the 
Danes ; as well as Rolla the Norman, and other freebooters, 
who only wanted less need of robbery, to become respectable 
conquerors. In fact, they did so, as they got on. We have 
also no particular worthy to select from among that host of 
petty chieftains, who availed themselves of their knightly cas- 
tles and privileges, to commit all sorts of unchivalrous outrages. 
These are the giants of modern romance ; and the Veglios, 
Malengins, and Pinabellos, of Pulci, Spenser, and Ariosto. 
They survived in the petty states of Italy a long while ; gradu- 
ally took a less solitary, though hardly less ferocious shape, 
among the fierce political partisans recorded by Dante ; and at 
length became represented by the men of desperate fortunes, 
who made such a figure, between the gloomy and the gallant, in 
Mrs. RadclifFe's Mysteries of Udolpho. The breaking up of 
the late kingdom of Italy, with its dependencies, has again 
revived them in some degree ; but not, we believe, in any shape 
above common robbery. The regular modern thief seems to 
make his appearance for the first time in the imaginary charac- 
ter of Brunello, as described by Boiardo and Ariosto. He is a 
fellow that steals every valuable that comes in his way. The 
way in which he robs Sacripant, king of Circassia, of his horse, 
has been ridiculed by Cervantes ; if indeed he did not rather 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 89 



repeat it with great zest : for his use of the theft is really not 
such a caricature as in Boiardo and his great follower. While 
Sancho is sitting lumpishly asleep upon the back of his friend 
Dapple, Gines de Passamonte, the famous thief, comes and 
gently withdraws the donkey from under him, leaving the som- 
niculous squire propped upon a saddle with four sticks. His 
consternation on waking may be guessed. But in the Italian 
poets, the Circassian prince has only fallen into a deep medita- 
tion, when Brunello draws away his steed. Ariosto appears to 
have thought this extravagance a hazardous" one, though he 
could not deny himself the pleasure of repeating it ; for he has 
made Sacripant blush, when called upon to testify how the 
horse was stolen from him. (Orlando Furio., Lib. XXYII., St. 
84.) 

In the Italian Novels and the old French Tales, are a variety 
of extremely amusing stories of thieves, all most probably found- 
ed on fact. We will give a specimen as we go, by way of 
making this article the completer. A doctor of laws in Bologna 
had become rich enough, by scraping money together, to indulge 
himself in a grand silver cup, which he sent home one day to 
his wife from the goldsmith's. Th#re were two sharping fel- 
lows prowling about that day for a particular object : and getting 
scent of the cup, they laid their heads together, to contrive how 
they might indulge themselves in it instead. One of them 
accordingly goes to a fishmonger's, and buys a fine lamprey, 
which he takes to the doctor's wife, with her husband's compli- 
ments, and he would bring a company of his brother doctors 
with him to dinner, requesting in the meantime that she would 
send back the cup by the bearer, as he had forgotten to have his 
arms engraved upon it. The good lady, happy to obey all these 
pleasing impulses on the part of master doctor, takes in the fish, 
and sends cut the cup, with equal satisfaction ; ■ and sets about 
getting the dinner ready. The doctor comes home at his usual 
hour, and finding his dinner so much better than ordinary, asks 
with an air of wonder, where was the necessity of going to that 
expense : upon which the wife, putting on an air of wonder in her 
turn, and proud of possessing the new cup, asks him where are all 
those brother doctors, whom he said he should bring with him, 



90 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

"What does the fool mean ?" said the testy old gentleman. 
" Mean !" rejoined the wife — " what does this mean ?" pointing 
to the fish. The doctor looked down with his old eyes at the lam- 
prey. " God knows," said he, " what it means. I am sure I 
don't know what it means more than any other fish, except that I 
shall have to pay a pretty sum for every mouthful you eat of it.' J 
_" Why, it was your own doing, husband," said the wife ;' J 
" and you will remember it, perhaps, when you recollect that the 
same man that brought me the fish, was to take away the cup to 
have your name engraved upon it." At this the doctor started 
back, with his eyes as wide open as the fish's, exclaiming, 
" And you gave it him, did you ?" — " To be sure I did," return- 
ed the good housewife. The old doctor here began a passionate 
speech, which he suddenly broke off ; and after stamping up 
and down the room, and crying out that he was an undone advo- 
cate, ran quivering out into the street like one frantic, asking 
everybody if he had seen a man with a lamprey. The two 
rogues were walking all this time in the neighborhood ; and 
seeing the doctor set off, in his frantic fit, to the goldsmith's, and 
knowing that he who brought the lamprey had been well disguis- 
ed, they began to ask one another, in the jollity of their triumph, 
what need there was for losing a good lamprey, because they had 
gained a cup. The other therefore went to the doctor's house, 
and putting on a face of good news, told the wife that the cup 
was found. " Master doctor," said he, " bade me come and tell 
you that it was but a joke of your old friend What's-his name." 
— " Castellani, I warrant me," said the wife, with a face broad 
with delight. " The same," returned he : — " master doctor says 
that Signor Castellani, and the other gentlemen he spoke of, are 
waiting for you at the Signor's house, where they propose to 
laugh away the choler they so merrily raised, with a good dinner 
and wine, and to that end they have sent me for the lamprey." — 
" Take it in God's name," said the good woman ; " I am heartily 
glad to see it go out of the house, and shall follow it myself speed- 
ily." So saying, she gave him the fine hot fish, with some 
sauce, between two dishes ; and the knave, who felt already 
round the corner with glee, slid it under his cloak, and made the 
best of his way to his companion, who lifted up his hands and eyes 



chap, xx.l THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 91 

at sight of him, and asked twenty questions in a breath, and 
chuckled, and slapped his thigh, and snapped his ringers for joy, 
to think what a pair of fools two rogues had to do with. Little 
did the despairing doctor, on his return home, guess what they 
were saying of him as he passed the wall of the house in which 
they were feasting. " Heyday !" cried the wife, smiling all 
abroad, as she saw him entering, " what, art thou come to fetch 
me then, bone of my bone ? Well ; if this isn't the gallantest 
day I have seen many a year ! It puts me in mind — it puts me in 

mind" Here the chirping old lady was about to remind the 

doctor of the days of his youth, holding out her arms and raising 
her quivering voice, when (we shudder to relate) she received a 
considerable cuff on the left cheek. "You make me mad," 
cried the doctor, " with your eternal idiotical nonsense. What 
do you mean by coming to fetch you, and the gallantest day of 
your life ? May the devil fetch you, and me, and that invisible 
fiend that stole the cup." — "What!" exclaimed the wife, sud- 
denly changing her tone from a vociferous complaint which she 
had unthinkingly set up, " did you send nobody then for the 
lamprey ?" Here the doctor cast his eyes upon the bereaved 
table ; and unable to bear the shame of this additional loss, 
however trivial, began tearing his hair and beard, and hopping 
about the room, giving his wife a new and scandalous epithet 
at every step, as if he was dancing to a catalogue of her imper- 
fections. The story shook all the shoulders in Bologna for a 
month after. 

As we find, by the length to which this article has already 
reached, that we should otherwise be obliged to compress otA 
recollections of Spanish, French, and English thieves, into a 
compass that would squeeze them into the merest dry notices, 
we will postpone them at once to our next number ; and relate 
another story from the same Italian novelist that supplied our 
last.* Our author is Massuccio of Salerno, a novelist who dis- 
putes with Bandello the rank next in popularity to Boccaccio, 

* In the original edition of the Indicator this article was divided into 
three numbers. Perhaps it would have been better had the division been 
retained ; but perplexities occur in hastily correcting a work for a new edi- 
tion, which t le reader will have the goodness to excuse. 



92 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 

We have not the original by us, and must be obliged to an Eng- 
lish work for the groundwork of our story, as we have been to 
Paynter's Palace of Pleasure for the one just related. But we 
take the liberty usual with the repeaters of these stories ; we 
retain the incidents, but tell them in our own way, and imagine 
what might happen in the intervals. 

Two Neapolitan sharpers, having robbed a Genoese merchant 
of his purse, made the best of their way to Sienna, where they 
arrive during the preaching of St. Bernardin. One of them 
attends a sermon with an air of conspicuous modesty and devo- 
tion, and afterwards waits upon the preacher, and addresses him 
thus : " Reverend father, you see before you a man, poor indeed, 
but honest. I do not mean to boast ; God knows, I have no rea- 
son. Who upon earth has reason, unless it be one who will be 
the last to boast, like yourself, holy father ? 55 Here the saintly 
orator shook his head. " I do not mean, 55 resumed the stranger, 
" to speak even of the reverend and illustrious Bernardin, but as 
of a man among men. For my part, I am, as it were, a creep- 
ing thing among them ; and yet I am honest. If I have any 
virtue, it is that. I crawl right onward in my path, looking 
neither to the right nor to the left ; and yet I have my temptations, 
Reverend father, I have found this purse. I will not deny, that 
being often in want of the common necessaries of life, and 
having been obliged last night, in particular, to sit down faint at 
the city gates, for want of my ordinary crust and onion, which 
I had given to one (God help him) still worse off than myself, I 
did cast some looks — I did, I say, just open the purse, and cast 
PFwistful eye at one of those shining pieces, that lay one over 
the other inside, with something like a wish that I could procure 
myself a meal with it, unknown to the lawful proprietor. But 
my conscience, thank Heaven, prevailed. I have to make two 
requests to you, reverend father. First, that you will absolve 
me for this my offence ; and second, that you will be pleased to 
mention in one of your discourses, that a poor sinner from Milan, 
on his road to hear them, has found a purse, and would willingly 
restore it to the right owner. I would fain give double the con- 
tents of it to find him out ; but then, what can I do ? All the 
wealth I have consists in my honesty. Be pleased, most ill us- 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 93 

trious father, to mention this in your discourse, as modestly as 
becomes my nothingness ; and to add especially, that the purse 
was found on the road from Milan, lying, miraculously as it 
were, upon a sunny bank, open to the view of all, under an 
olive-tree, not far from a little fountain, the pleasant noise of 
which peradventure had invited the owner to sleep." The good 
father, at hearing this detail, smiled at the anxious sincerity of 
the poor pilgrim, and, giving him the required absolution, promis- 
ed to his utmost to bring forth the proprietor. In his next ser- 
mon, he accordingly dwelt with such eloquence on the opportuni- 
ties thrown in the way of the rich who lose purses to behave 
nobly, that his congregation several times half rose from their 
seats out of enthusiasm, and longed for some convenient loss of 
property that might enable them to show their disinterestedness. 
At the conclusion of it, however, a man stepped forward, and 
said, that anxious as he was to do justice to the finder of the 
purse, which he knew to be his the moment he saw it (only he 
was loth to interrupt the reverend father), he had claims upon 
him at home in the person of his wife and thirteen children, — 
fourteen perhaps, he might now say, — which, to his great sor- 
row, prevented him from giving the finder more than a quarter 
of a piece ; this however he offered him with the less scruple, 
since he saw the seraphic disposition of the reverend preacher 
and his congregation, who he had no doubt would make ample 
amends for this involuntary deficiency on the part of a poor 
family man, the whole portion of whose wife and children might 
be said to be wrapped up in that purse. His sleep under the olive- 
tree had been his last for these six nights (here the other mflk 
said, with a tremulous joy of acknowledgment, that it was 
indeed just six nights since he had found it) ; and Heaven only 
knew when he should have had another, if his children's bread, 
so to speak, had not been found again." With these words, the 
sharper (for such, of course, he was) presented the quarter of a 
piece to his companion, who made all but a prostration for it ; 
and hastened with the purse out of the church. The other 
man's circumstances were then inquired into, and as he was 
found to have almost as many children as the purse-owner, and 
no possessions at all, as he said, but his honesty, — all his chil- 



94 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 

dren being equally poor and pious, — a considerable subscription 
was raised for him ; so large, indeed, that on the appearance of 
a new claimant next day, the pockets of the good people were 
found empty. This was no other than the Genoese merchant, 
who having turned back on his road when he missed his purse, 
did not stop till he came to Sienna, and heard the news of the 
day before. Imagine the feelings of the deceived people ! 
Saint Bernardin was convinced that the two cheats were devils 
in disguise. The resident canon had thought pretty nearly as 
much all along, but had held his tongue, and now hoped it would 
be a lesson to people not to listen to everybody who could talk, 
especially to the neglect of Saint Antonio's monastery. As to 
the people themselves, they thought variously. Most of them 
were mortified at having been cheated : and some swore they 
never would be cheated again, let appearances be what they 
might. Others thought that this was a resolution somewhat equi- 
vocal, and more convenient than happy. For our parts, we 
think the last were right : and this reminds us of a true English 
story, more good than striking, which we heard a short while 
ago from a friend. He knew a man of rugged manners, but 
good heart (not that the two things, as a lover of parentheses 
will say, are at all bound to go together), who had a wife some- 
what given to debating with hackney-coachmen, and disputing 
acts of settlement respecting half-miles, and quarter-miles, and 
abominable additional sixpences. The good housewife was lin- 
gering at the door, and exclaiming against one of these mon- 
strous charioteers, whose hoarse low voice was heard at inter- 
jrfls, full of lying protestations and bad weather, when the hus- 
mnd called out from a back-room, " Never mind there, never 
mind : — let her be cheated ; let her be cheated. 5 ' 

This is a digression : but it is as well to introduce it, in order to 
take away a certain bitterness out of the mouth of the other's moral . 

We now come to a very unromantic set of rogues ; the Spanish 
ones. In a poetical sense, at least, they are unromantic ; though 
doubtless the mountains of Spain have seen as picturesque vaga- 
bonds in their time as any. There are the robbers in Gil Bias, 
who have, at least, a respectable cavern, and loads of polite 
superfluities. Who can forget the lofty-named Captain Rolando, 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 95 

with his sturdy height and his whiskers, showing with a lighted 
torch his treasure to the timid stripling, Gil Bias ? The most 
illustrious theft in Spanish story is one recorded of no less a 
person than the fine old national hero, the Cid. As the suffer- 
ers were Jews, it might be thought that his conscience would not 
have hurt him in those days ; but " My Cid " was a kind of 
early soldier in behalf of sentiment ; and though he went to work 
roughly, he meant nobly and kindly. " God knows," said he, 
on the present occasion, " I do this thing more of necessity than 
of wilfulness ; but by God's help I shall redeem all." The case 
was this. The Cid, who was too good a subject to please his 
master, the king, had quarrelled with him, or rather, had been 
banished ; and nobody was to give him house-room or food. A 
number of friends, however, followed him ; and by the help of 
his nephew, Martin Antolinez, he proposed to raise some money. 
Martin accordingly negotiated the business with a couple of rich 
Jews, who, for a deposite of two chests full of spoil, which they 
were not to open for a year, on account of political circumstan- 
ces, agreed to advance six hundred marks. " Well, then," said 
Martin Antolinez, " ye see that the night is advancing ; the Cid 
is in haste, give us the marks." " This is not the way of busi- 
ness," said they ; we must take first, and then give." Martin 
accordingly goes with them to the Cid, who in the meantime has 
filled a couple of heavy chests with sand. The Cid smiled as 
they kissed his hand, and said, " Ye see I am going out of the 
land because of the king's displeasure ; but I shall leave some- 
thing with ye." The Jews made a suitable answer, and w eig 
then desired to take the chests ; but, though strong men, they 
could not raise them from the ground. This put them in such 
spirits, that after telling out the six hundred marks (which Don 
Martin took without weighing), they offered the Cid a present of a 
fine red skin ; and upon Don Martin's suggesting that he thought 
his own services in the business merited a pair of hose, they con- 
sulted a minute with each other, in order to do everything judi- 
ciously, and then gave him money enough to buy, not only the 
hose, but a rich doublet and good cloak into the bargain.* 

* See Mr. Southey's excellent compilation entitled The Chronicles of the 
Cid, Book III., Sec. 21. The version at the end of the book, attributed to Mr. 



THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 



The regular sharping rogues, however, that abound in Spanish 
books of adventure, have one species of romance about them of 
a very peculiar nature. It may be called, we fear, as far as 
Spain is concerned, a " romance of real life." We allude to 
the absolute want and hunger which is so often the original of their 
sin. A vein of this craving nature runs throughout most of the 
Spanish novels. In other countries theft is generally represent- 
ed as the result of an abuse of plenty, or of some other kind of 
profligacy, or absolute ruin. But it seems to be an understood 
thing, that to be poor in Spain is to be in want of the common- 
est necessaries of life. If a poor man, here and there, happens 
not to be in so destitute a state as the rest, he thinks himself 
bound to maintain the popular character for an appetite, and 
manifests the most prodigious sense of punctuality and antici- 
pation in all matters relating to meals. Who ever thinks of 
Sancho, and does not think of ten minutes before luncheon ? 
Don Quixote? on the other hand, counts it ungenteel and undig- 
nified to be hungry. The cheat who flatters Gil Bias reckons 
himself entitled to be insultingly triumphant, merely because he 
has got a dinner out of him. 

Of all these ingenious children of necessity, whose roguery has 
been sharpened by perpetual want, no wit was surely ever kept 
at so subtle and fierce an edge as that of the never-to-be-decently- 
treated Lazarillo de Tormes. If we ourselves had not been at a 
sort of monastic school, and known the beatitude of dry bread 
and a draught of spring- water, his history would seem to inform 

«%r the first time, what hunger was. His cunning so truly 
s pace with it, that he se^ms recompensed for the wants of 
to.mach by the abundant energies of his head. One-half of 
nagination is made up of dry bread and scraps, and the other 
of meditating how to get at them. Every thought of his mind and 
every feeling of his affection coalesces and tends to one point with 
a ventripetal force. It was said of a contriving lady, that she 

Hookham Frere, of a passage out of the Poema del Cid, is the most naive 
and terse bit of translation we ever met with. It rides along, like the Cid 
himself on horseback, *vith an infinite mixture of ardor and self-possession : 
bending, when it cnooses, with grace, or bearing down everything with 
mastery. 



chap xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. » 97 

took her very tea by stratagem. Lazarillo is not so lucky. It is 
enough for him, if by a train of the most ingenious contrivances. 
he can lay successful siege to a crust. To rout some broken 
victuals ; to circumvent an onion or so, extraordinary, is the 
utmost aim of his ambition. An ox-foot is his beau-ideal. He 
has as intense and circuitous a sense of a piece of cheese, as 
a mouse at a trap. He swallows surreptitious crumbs with as 
much zest as a young servant-girl does a plate of preserves. 
But to his story. He first serves a blind beggar, with whom he 
lives miserably, except when he commits thefts, which subject 
him to miserable beatings. He next lives with a priest, and 
finds his condition worse. His third era of esuriency takes 
place in the house of a Spanish gentleman ; and here he is 
worse off than ever. The reader wonders, as he himself did, 
how he can possibly ascend to this climax of starvation. To 
overreach a blind beggar might be thought easy. The reader 
will judge by a specimen or two. The old fellow used to keep 
his mug of liquor between his legs, that Lazarillo might not 
touch it without his knowledge. He did, however ; and the beg- 
gar discovering it, took to holding the mug in future by the 
handle. Lazarillo then contrives to suck some of the liquor off 
with a reed, till the beggar defeats this contrivance by keeping 
one hand upon the vessel's mouth. His antagonist, upon this, 
makes a hole near the bottom of the mug, filling it up with wax, 
and so tapping the can with as much gentleness as possible, 
whenever his thirst makes him bold. This stratagem threw the 
blind man into despair. He " used to swear and domineer/' 
and wish both the pot and its contents at the devil. The follow. 
ing account of the v result is a specimen of the English transla- 
tion of the work, which is done with great tact and spirit, we 
know not by whom, but it is worthy of De Foe. Lazarillo is 
supposed to tell his adventures himself. " ' You won't accuse 
me any more, I hope,' cried I, ' of drinking your wine,* after all 
the fine precautions you have taken to prevent it V To that he 
said not a word ; but feeling all about the pot, he at last un- 
luckily discovered the hole, which dissembling at that time, he 

* The reader is to understand a common southern wine, very cheap 
8 



98 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 

let me alone till next day at dinner. Not dreaming, my reader 
must know, of tie old man's malicious stratagem, but getting in 
between his legs, according to my wonted custom, and receiving 
into my mouth the distilling dew, and pleasing myself with the 
success of my own ingenuity, my eyes upward, but half shut, - 
the furious tyrant, taking up the sweet but hard pot, with both 
his hands, flung it down again with all his force upon my face ; 
with the violence of which blow, imagining the house had fallen 
upon my head, I lay sprawling without any sentiment or judg- 
ment ; my forehead, nose, and mouth, gushing out of blood, and 
the latter full of broken teeth, and broken pieces of the can. 
From that time forward, I ever abominated the monstrous old 
churl, and in spite of all his flattering stories, could easily ob- 
serve how my punishment tickled the old rogue's fancy. He 
washed my sores with wine ; and with a smile, i What sayest 
thou/ quoth he, ' Lazarillo 1 the thing that hurt thee, now 
restores thee to health. Courage, my boy.' But all his raillery 
could not make me change my mind." 

At another time, a countryman giving them a cluster of 
grapes, the old man, says Lazarillo, " would needs take that 
opportunity to show me a little kindness, after he had been 
chiding and beating me the whole day before. So setting our- 
selves down by a hedge, 6 Come hither, Lazarillo,' quoth he, 
i and let us enjoy ourselves a little, and eat these raisins toge- 
ther ; which that we may share like brothers, do you take but 
one at a time, and be sure not to cheat me, and I promise you, 
for my part, I shall take no more.' That I readily agreed to, 
and so we began our banquet ; but at the very second time he 
took a couple, believing, I suppose, that I would do the same. 
And finding he had shown me the way, I made no scruple all 
the while to take two, three, or four at a time ; sometimes more 
and sometimes less, as conveniently I could. When we had 
done, the old man shook his head, and holding the stalk in his 
hand, ' Thou hast cheated me, Lazarillo,' quoth he, c for I could 
take my oath, that thou hast taken three at a time.' c Who, I ! 
I beg your pardon,' qioth I, ( my conscience is as dear to me as 
another.' ' Pass that jest upon another,' answered the old fox ; 
c you saw me take two at a time without complaining of it, and 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 99 

therefore you took three. 5 At that I could hardly forbear laugn- 
ing ; and at the same time admired the justness of his reason- 
ing." Lazarillo at length quitted the service of the old hard- 
hearted miser, and revenged himself upon him at the same 
time, in a very summary manner. They were returning home 
one day on account of bad weather, when they had to cross a 
kennel which the rain had swelled to a little torrent. The beg- 
gar was about to jump over it as well as he could, when Laza- 
rillo persuaded him to go a little lower down the stream, because 
there was a better crossing ; that is, there was a stone pillar on 
the other side, against which he knew the blind old fellow would 
nearly dash his brains out. " He was mightily pleased with my 
advice. i Thou art in the right on it, good boy/ quoth he ; ' and 
I love thee with all my heart, Lazarillo. Lead me to the place 
thou speakest of; the water is very dangerous in winter, and 
especially to have one's feet wet. 5 And again — ' Be sure to set 
me in the right place, Lazarillo, 5 quoth he ; \ and then do thou 
go over first. 5 I obeyed his orders, and set him exactly before 
the pillar, and so leaping over, posted myself behind it, looking 
upon him as a man would do upon a mad bull. i Now your 
jump, 5 quoth I ; c and you may get over to rights, without ever 
touching the water. 5 I had scarce done speaking, when the old 
man, like a ram that 5 s fighting, ran three steps backwards, to 
take his start with the greater vigor, and so his head came with 
a vengeance against the stone pillar, which made him fall back 
into the kennel half dead. 55 Lazarillo stops a moment to triumph 
over him with insulting language ; and then, says he, " resign- 
ing my blind, bruised, wet, old, cross, cunning master to the care 
of the mob that was gathered about him, I made the best of my 
heels, without ever looking about, till I had got the town gate 
upon my back ; and thence marching on a merry pace, I arrived 
before night at Torrigo. 55 

At the house of the priest, poor Lazarillo gets worse off than 
before, and is obliged o resort to the most extraordinary shifts 
to arrive at a morsel of bread. At one time, he gets a key of a 
tinker, and opening the old trunk in which the miser kept his 
bread (a sight, he says, like the opening of heaven), he takes 
small pieces out of three or four, in imitation of a mouse ; which 



100 THE INIICATOR. [chap. xx. 

so convinces the old hunks that the mice and rats have been at 
them, that he is more liberal of the bread than usual. He lets 
him have in particular " the parings above the parts where he 
thought the mice had been." Another of his contrivances is to 
palm off his pickings upon a serpent, with which animal a 
neighbor told the priest that his house had been once haunted. 
Lazarillo, who had been used when he lived with the beggar to 
husband pieces of money in his mouth (substituting some lesser 
coin in the blind man's hand, when people gave him anything), 
now employs the same hiding-place for his key ; but whistling 
through it unfortunately one night, as he lay breathing hard in 
his sleep, the priest concludes he has caught the serpent, and 
going to Lazarillo's bed with a broomstick, gives him at a ven- 
ture such a tremendous blow on the head, as half murders him. 
The key is then discovered, and the poor fellow turned out of 
doors. 

He is now hired by a lofty-looking hidalgo ; and follows him 
home, eating a thousand good things by anticipation. They 
pass through the markets, however, to no purpose. The squire 
first goes to church too, and spends an unconscionable time at 
mass. At length they arrive at a dreary, ominous-looking 
house, and ascend into a decent apartment, where the squire, 
after shaking his cloak, and blowing off the dust from a stone 
seat, lays it neatly down, and so makes a cushion of it to sit 
upon. There is no other furniture in the room, nor even in the 
neighboring rooms, except a bed " composed of the anatomy of 
an old hamper." The truth is, the squire is as poor as Laza- 
rillo, only too proud to own it ; and so he starves both himself 
and his servant at home, and then issues gallantly forth of a 
morning, with his Toledo by his side, and a countenance of 
stately satisfaction ; returning home every day about noon with 
" a starched body, reaching out his neck like a greyhound." 
Lazarillo had not been a day in the house, before he found out 
how matters went. He was beginning, in his despair of a din- 
ner, to eat some scraps of bread which had been given him in 
the morning, when the squire observing him, asked wha he was 
about. " Come hither, boy," said he, " what's that thou art 
eating ?" — " I went," says Lazarillo, " and showed him three 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 101 

pieces of bread, of which, taking away the best, e Upon mj, 
faith,' quoth he, 'this bread seems to be very good.' — i 'Tis too 
stale and hard, sir/ said I, 'to be good.. 5 — 'I swear 'tis very 
good,' said the squire ; c who gave it thee ? Were their hands 
clean that gave it thee V — ' I took it without asking any ques- 
tions, sir,' answered I, ' and you see I eat it as freely.' — e Pray 
God it may be so,' answered the miserable squire ; and so put- 
ting the bread to his mouth, he eat it with no less appetite than 
I did mine ; adding to every mouthful, l Gadzooks, this bread is 
excellent." 

Lazarillo, in short, here finds the bare table so completely 
turned upon him, that he is forced to become provider for his 
master as well as himself; which he does by fairly going out 
every day and begging : the poor squire winking at the indig- 
nity, though not without a hint at keeping the connection secret. 
The following extract shall be our climax, which it may well 
be, the hunger having thus ascended into the ribs of Spanish 
aristocracy. Lazarillo, one lucky day, has an ox-foot and some 
tripe given him by a butcher- woman. On coming home, with 
his treasure, he finds the hidalgo impatiently walking up and 
down, and fears he shall have a scolding for staying so long ; 
but the squire merely asks where he has been, and receives the 
account with an irrepressible air of delight. " I sate down," 
says Lazarillo, " upon the end of the stone seat, and began to 
eat that he might fancy I was feasting ; and observed, without 
seeming to take notice, that his eye was fixed upon my skirt, 
which was all the plate and table that I had. 

" May God pity me as I had compassion on that poor squire ; 
daily experience made me sensible of his trouble. I did not 
know whether I should invite him, for since he had told me he 
had dined, I thought he would make a point of honor to refuse 
to eat ; but in short, being very desirous to supply his necessity, 
as I had done the day before, and which I was then much bet- 
ter in a condition to do, having already sufficiently stuffed my 
own guts, it was not long before an opportunity fairly offered 
itself; for he taking occasion to come near me in his walks, 
1 Lazarillo,' quoth ha (as soon as he observed me begin to eat), 
* I never saw anybody eat so handsomely as thee ; a body can 



102 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

scarce see thee fall to work without desiring to bear thee compa- 
ny ; let their stomachs be never so full, or their mouth be never 
so much out of taste. 5 Faith, thought I to myself, with such an 
empty belly as yours, my own mouth would water at a great 
deal less. 

" But finding he was come where I wished him : ' Sir,' said 
I, ' good stuff makes a good workman. This is admirable 
bread, and here's an ox-foot so nicely dressed and so well-sea- 
soned, that anybody would delight to taste of it.' 

" ' How !" cried the squire, interrupting me, ' an ox-foot V — 
' Yes, sir,' said I, ' an ox-foot.' — ' Ah ! then? quoth he, ' thou 
hast in my opinion the delicatest hit in Spain ; there being neither 
partridge, pheasant, nor any other thing that I like nearly so 
well as that.' 

" 'Will you please to try, sir?' said I (putting the ox-foot in 
his hand, with two good morsels of bread): 'when you have 
tasted it you will be convinced that it is a treat for a king, 'tis 
so well dressed and seasoned.' 

" Upon that, sitting down by my side, he began to eat, or 
rather to devour, what I had given him, so that the bones could 
hardly escape. 'Oh! the excellent bit,' did he cry, 'that this 
would be with a little garlic !' Ha ! thought I to myself, how 
hastily thou eatest it without sauce. ' Gad,' said the squire, 'I 
have eaten this as heartily as if I had not tasted a bit of victuals 
to-day :' which I did very readily believe. 

" He then called for the pitcher with the water, which was as 
full as I had brought it home ; so you may guess whether he 
had had any. When his squireshiphad drank, he civilly invit- 
ed me to do the like ; and thus ended our feast." 

We hope the reader is as much amused with this prolonga- 
tion of the subject as ourselves, for we are led on insensibly by 
these amusing thieves, and find we have more to write upon 
them, before we have done. We must give another specimen 
or two of the sharping Spaniard, out of Quevedo. The Adven- 
turesy by the way, of Lazarillo de Tormes, were written in the 
sixteenth century by a Spanish gentleman, apparently of illus- 
trious family, Don Diego de Mendoza, who was sometime am- 
bassador at Venice. This renders the story of the hidalgo still 



chap xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 103 

more curious. Not that the author perha* s ever felt the proud 
but condescending pangs which he describes ; this is not neces- 
sary for a man of imagination. He merely meant to give a 
hint to the poorer gentry not to overdo the matter on the side of 
loftiness, for their own sakes ; and hunger, whether among the 
proud or the humble, was too national a thing not to be entered 
into by his statistic apprehension. 

The most popular work connected with sharping adventures 
is Gil Bias, which, though known to us as a French production, 
seems unquestionably to have originated in the country where 
the scene is laid. It is a work exquisitely easy and true; but 
somehow we have no fancy for the knaves in it. They are of 
too smooth, sneaking, and safe a cast. They neither bespeak 
one's sympathy by necessity, nor one's admiration by daring. 
We except, of course, the robbers before-mentioned, who are a 
picturesque patch in the world, like a piece of rough poetry. 

Of the illustrious Guzman d' Alfarache, the most popular book 
of the kind, we believe, in Spain, and admired, we know, in 
this country by some excellent judges, we cannot with propriety 
speak, for we have only read a few pages at the beginning ; 
though we read them twice over, at two different times, and 
each time with the same intention of going on. In truth, as 
Guzman is called by way of eminence the Spanish Rogue, we 
must say for him, as far as our slight acquaintance warrants it, 
that he is also " as tedious as a king." They say, however, he 
has excellent stuff in him. 

We can speak as little of Marcos de Ooregon, of which a 
translation appeared a little while ago. We have read it, and, 
if we remember rightly, were pleased ; but want of memory on 
these occasions is not a good symptom. Quevedo, no ordinary 
person, is very amusing. His Visions of Hell, in particular, 
though of a very different kind from Dante's, are more edifying 
But our business at present is with his " History of Paul the 
Spanish Sharper, the Pattern of Rogues and Mirror of Vaga- 
bonds ." We do not know that he deserves these appellations so 
much as some others ; but they are to be looked upon as titulai 
ornaments, common to the Spanish Kleptocracy. He is extreme- 
ly pleasant, especially in his younger days. His mother, who 



104 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

is no better than the progenitor of such a personage ought to be, 
happens to have the misfortune one day of being carted. Paul, 
who was then a school-boy, was elected king on some boyish 
holiday ; and riding out upon a half-starved horse, it picked up a 
small cabbage as they went through the market. The market- 
women began pelting the king with rotten oranges and turnip 
tops • upon which, having feathers in his cap, and getting a no- 
tion in his head that they mistook him for his mother, who, 
agreeably to a Spanish custom, was tricked out in the same 
manner when she was carted, he halloo'd out, " Good women, 
though I wear feathers in my cap, I am none of Alonza Saturuo 
de Rebillo. She is my mother." 

Paul used to be set upon unlucky tricks by the son of a man 
of rank, who preferred enjoying a joke to getting punished for 
it. Among others, one Christmas, a counsellor happening to go 
by of the name of Pontio de Auguirre, the little Don told his 
companion to call Pontius Pilate, and then to run away. He 
did so, and the angry counsellor followed after him with a knife 
in his hand, so that he was forced to take refuge in the house of 
the schoolmaster. The lawyer laid his indictment, and Paul got 
a hearty flogging, during which he was enjoined never to call 
Pontius Pilate again ; to which he heartily agreed. The con- 
sequence was, that next day, when the boys were at prayers, 
Paul, coming to the Belief, and thinking that he was never 
again to name Pontius Pilate, gravely said, " Suffered under 
Pontio de Auguirre ;" which evidence of his horror of the 
scourge so interested the pedagogue, that, by a Catholic mode of 
dispensation, he absolved him from the next two whippings he 
should incur. 

But we forget that our little picaro was a thief. One speci- 
men of his talents this way, and we have done with the Span- 
iards. He went with young Don Diego to the university ; and 
here getting applause for some tricks he played upon people, 
and dandling, as it were, his growing propensity to theft, he in- 
vited his companions one evening to see him steal a box of com- 
fits from a confectioner's. He accordingly draws his rapier, 
which was stiff and well-pointed ; runs violently into the shop ; 
and exclaiming, " You're a dead man !" makes a fierce lunge 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 105 

at the confectioner between the body and arm. Down drops the 
man, half dead with fear ; the others rush out. But what of 
the box of comfits ? " Where is the box of comfits, Paul V 
said the rogues : " we do not see what you have done after all, 
except frighten the fellow?" — " Look here, my boys," answer- 
ed Paul. They looked, and at the end of his rapier beheld, 
with shouts of laughter, the vanquished box. He had marked 
it out on the shelf; and under pretence of lunging at the con- 
fectioner, pinked it away like a muffin. 

Upon turning to Quevedo, we find that the story has grown a 
little upon our memory, as to detail ; but this is the spirit of it. 
The prize here, it is to be observed, is something eatable, and 
the same yearning is a predominant property of Quevedo's 
sharpers, as well as the others. 

Adieu, ye pleasant rogues of Spain ! ye surmounters of bad 
government, hunger, and misery, by the mere force of a light 
climate and fingers ! The dinner calls ; — and to talk about you 
before it, is as good as taking a ride on horseback. 

We must return a moment to the Italian thieves, to relate a 
couple of stories related of Ariosto and Tasso. The former was 
for a short period governor of Grafagnana, a disturbed district 
in the Apennines, which his prudent and gentle policy brought 
back from its disaffection. Among its other troubles were nu- 
merous bands of robbers, two of the names of whose leaders, 
Domenico Maraco, and Filippo Pacchione, have come down to 
posterity. Ariosto, during the first days of his government, was 
riding out with a small retinue, when he had to pass through a 
number of suspicious-looking armed men. The two parties had 
scarcely cleared each other, when the chief of the strangers 
asked a servant, who happened to be at some distance behind the 
others, who that person was. " It is the captain of the citadel 
here," said the man, " Lodovico Ariosto." The stranger no 
sooner heard the name, than he went running back to overtake 
the governor, who, stopping his horse, waited with some anxiety 
for the event. " I beg your pardon, Sir," said he, " but I was 
not aware that so great a person as the Signor Lodovico Ariosto 
was passing near me. My name is Filippo Pacchione ; and 



106 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 

when I knew who it was, I could not go on without returning to 
pay the respect due to so illustrious a name." 

A doubt is thrown on this story, or rather on the particular 
person who gave occasion to it, by the similarhy of an adven- 
ture related of Tasso. Both of them however are very probable, 
let the similarity be what it may ; for both the poets had occa- 
sion to go through disturbed districts ; robbers abounded in both 
their times ; and the leaders being most probably men rather of 
desperate fortunes than want of knowledge, were likely enough 
to seize such opportunities of vindicating their better habits, and 
showing a romantic politeness. The enthusiasm too is quite in 
keeping with the national character ; and it is to be observed 
that the particulars of Tasso's adventure are different, though 
the spirit of it is the same. He was journeying, it is said, 
in company with others, for better security against the banditti 
who infested the borders of the papal territory, when they 
were told that Sciarra, a famous robber, was at hand in 
considerable force. Tasso was for pushing on, and de- 
fending themselves if attacked; but his opinion was overrul- 
ed ; and the company threw themselves, for safety, into the city 
of Mola. Here Sciarra kept them in a manner blocked up ; 
but hearing that Tasso was among the travellers, he sent him 
word that he should not only be allowed to pass, but should have 
safe-conduct whithersoever he pleased. The lofty poet, making 
it a matter of delicacy, perhaps, to waive an advantage of which 
his company could not partake, declined the offer ; upon which 
Sciarra sent another message, saying, that upon the sole ac- 
count of Tasso, the ways should be left open. And they were so. 

We can call to mind no particular German thieves, except 
those who figure in romances, and in the Robbers of Schiller. 
To say the truth, we are writing just now with but few books to 
refer to ; and the better informed reader must pardon any defi- 
ciency he meets with in these egregious and furtive memoran- 
dums. Of the Robbers of Schiller an extraordinary effect is 
related. It is said to have driven a number of wild-headed 
young Germans upon playing at banditti, not in the bounds of a 
school or university, but seriously in a forest. The matter-of- 
fact spirit in which a German sets about being enthusiastic, is a 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 107 

metaphysical curiosity which modern events render doubly inte- 
resting. It is extremely worthy of the attention of those rare 
personages, entitled reflecting politicians. # But we must take 
care of that kind of digression. It is very inhuman of these 
politics, that the habit of attending to them, though with the 
greatest good- will and sincerity, will always be driving a man 
upon thinking how his fellow-creatures are going on. 

There is a pleasant, well-known story of a Prussian thief and 
Frederick the Second. 

We forget what was the precise valuable found upon the 
Prussian soldier, and missed from an image of the Virgin Mary ; 
but we believe it was a ring. He was tried for sacrilege, and 
the case seemed clear against him, when he puzzled his Catho- 
lic judges by informing them, that the fact was, the Virgin 
Mary had given him that ring. Here was a terrible dilemma. 
To dispute the possibility or even probability of a gift from the 
Virgin Mary, was to deny their religion : while, on the other 
hand, to let the fellow escape on the pretence, was to canonize 
impudence itself. The worthy judges, in their perplexity, ap- 
plied to the king, who, under the guise of behaving delicately to 
their faith, was not sorry to have such an opportunity of joking 
it. His majesty therefore pronounced, with becoming gravity, 
that the allegation of the soldier could not but have its due 
weight with all Catholic believers ; but that in future, it was 
forbidden any Prussian subject, military or civil, to accept a 
present from the Virgin Mary. 

The district, formerly rendered famous by the exploits of 
Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, and since become infamous by 
the tyranny of Ali Bey, has been very fertile in robbers. And no 
wonder : for a semi-barbarous people so governed became thieves 
by necessity. The name indeed, as well as profession, is in 
such good receipt with an Albanian, that according to late tra- 
vellers, it is a common thing for him to begin his history by say- 
ing, " When I was a robber " We remember reading of 

some Albanian or Sclavonian leader of banditti, who made his 
enemies suppose he had a numerous force with him, by distri- 
buting military caps upon the hedges. 

There are some other nations who are all tl ; eves, more or 



108 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xx 

less ; or comprise such numbers of them as very much militate 
against the national character. Such are the piratical Malays ; 
the still more infamous Algerines ; and the mongrel tribes be- 
tween Arabia and Abyssinia. As to the Arabs, they have a 
prescriptive right, from tradition as well as local circumstances, 
to plunder everybody. The sanguinary ruffians of Ashantee 
and other black empires on the coast of Guinea are more like a 
government of murderers and ogres, than thieves. They are 
the next ruffians perhaps in existence to slave-dealers. The 
gentlest nation of pilferers are the Otaheitans : and something 
is to be said for their irresistible love of hatchets and old nails. 
. Let the European trader that is without sin, cast the first para- 
graph at them. Let him think what he should feel inclined to 
do, were a ship of some unknown nation to come upon his coast, 
with gold and jewels lying scattered about the deck. For no 
less precious is iron to the South Sea Islander. A Paradisiacal 
state of existence would be, to him, not the Golden, but the Iron 
Age. An Otaheitan Jupiter would visit his Danae in a shower 
of tenpenny nails. 

We are now come to a very multitudinous set of candidates 
for the halter, the thieves of our own beloved country. For what 
we know of the French thieves is connected with them, except- 
ing Cartouche ; and we remember nothing of him, but that he 
was a great ruffian, and died upon that worse ruffian, the rack. 

There is, to be sure, an eminent instance of a single theft in 
the Confessions of Rousseau ; and it is the second greatest blot 
in his book ; for he suffered a girl to be charged with and pun- 
ished for the theft, and maintained the lie to her face, though she 
was his friend, and appealed to him with tears. But it may be 
said for him, at any rate, that the world would not have known 
the story but for himself: and if such a disclosure be regarded 
by some as an additional offence (which it may be thought to be 
by some very delicate as well as dishonest people), we must 
recollect, that it was the object of his book to give a plain unso- 
phisticated account of a human being's experiences , and that 
many persons of excellent repute would have been found to 
have committed actions as bad, had they given accounts of them- 
selves as candid. Dr. Jo'inson was of opinion that all children 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 109 

were thieves and liars : and somebody, we believe a Scotch- 
man, answered a fond speech about human nature, by exclaim- 
ing that " human nature was a rogue and a vagabond, or so 
many laws would not have been necessary to restrain it." We 
venture to differ, on this occasion, with both Englishman and 
Scotchman. Laws in particular, taking the bad with the good, 
are quite as likely to have made rogues, as restrained them. 
But we see, at any rate, what has been suspected of more ortho- 
dox persons than Rousseau ; to say nothing of less charitable 
advantages which might be taken of such opinions. Rousseau 
committed a petty theft ; and miserably did his false shame, the 
parent of so many crimes, make him act. But he won back to 
their infants' lips the bqgpms of thousands of mothers. He re- 
stored to their bereaved and helpless owners thousands of those 
fountains of health and joy : and before he is abused, even for 
worse things than the theft, let those whose virtue consists in 
custom, think of this. 

As we have mixed fictitious with real thieves in this article, 
in a manner, we fear, somewhat uncritical (and yet the fictions 
are most likely founded on fact ; and the life of a real thief is 
a kind of dream and romance), we will despatch our fictitious 
English thieves before we come to the others. And we must 
make shorter work of them than we intended, or we shall never 
come to our friend Du Vail. The length to which this article 
has stretched out, will be a warning to us how we render our 
paper liable to be run away with in future. 

There is a very fine story of Three Thieves in Chaucer, 
which we must tell at large another time. The most prominent 
of the fabulous thieves in England is that bellipotent and immea- 
surable wag, Falstaff. If for a momentary freak, he thought it 
villanous to steal, at the next moment he thought it villanous 
not to steal. 

" Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more with vanity. I would 
to God though and I knew where a commodity of good names 
were to be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other 
day in the street, about you, Sir ; but I marked him not. And 
yet he talked very wisely ; but I regarded hi;n not. And yet 
he talked wisely ; and in the streets, too. 






110 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

" P. Henry. Thou didst well \ for ' Wisdom cries out in the 
streets, and no man regards it.' 

" Falstaff. O, thou hast damnable iteration ; and art, indeed, 
able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, 
Hal ; God forgive thee for it ! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew 
nothing; and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little bet- 
ter than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I 
will give it over : by the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain : I'll 
be damned for never a king's son in Christendom. 

"P. Henry. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack ? 

" Falstaff. Where thou wilt, lad \ I'll make one : an I do not, 
call me villain, and baffle me." 

We must take care how we speak of Macheath, or we shall be 
getting political again. Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great is 
also, in this sense, " caviare to the multitude." But we would 
say more if we had room. Count Fathom, a deliberate scoun- 
drel, compounded of the Jonathan Wilds and the more equivo- 
cal Cagliostros, and other adventurers, is a thief not at all to our 
taste. We are continually obliged to call his mother to our 
recollection, in order to bear him. The only instance in which 
the character of an absolute profligate pickpocket was ever 
made comparatively welcome to our graver feelings, is in the 
extraordinary story of " Manon VEscaut" by the Abbe Prevost. 
It is the story of a young man, so passionately in love with a 
profligate female, that he follows her through every species of 
vice and misery, even when she is sent as a convict to New 
Orleans. His love, indeed, is returned. He is obliged to sub- 
sist upon her vices, and, in return, is induced to help her with 
his own, becoming a cheat and a swindler to supply her outra- 
geous extravagances. On board the convict-ship (if we recol- 
lect) he waits on her through every species of squalidness, the 
convict-dress and her shaved head only redoubling his love by 
the help of pity. This seems a shocking and very immoral 
book ; yet multitudes of very reputable people have found a 
charm in it. The fact is, not only that Manon is beautiful, 
sprightly, really fond of her lover, and after all, becomes 
reformed ; but that it Is delightful, and ought to be so, to the 
human heart, to see a vein of sentiment and real goodness look- 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. Ill 



ing out through all this callous surface of guilt. It is like 
meeting with a tree in a squalid hole of a city ; a flower or a 
frank face in a reprobate purlieu. The capabilities of human 
nature are not compromised. The virtue alone seems natural ; 
the guilt, as it so often is, seems artificial, and the result of some 
bad education or other circumstance. Nor is anybody injured, 
[t is one of the shallowest of all shallow notions to talk of the 
harm of such works. Do we think nobody is to be harmed but 
the virtuous ; or that there are not privileged harms and vices 
to be got rid of, as well as unprivileged ? No good-hearted 
person will be injured by reading " Manon FEscaut." There 
is the belief in goodness in it ; a faith, the want of which does 
so much harm, both to the vicious and the over-righteous. 

The prince of all robbers, English or foreign, is undoubtedly 
Robin Hood. There is a worthy Scottish namesake of his, Rob 
Roy, who has lately had justice done to all his injuries by a 
countryman ; and the author, it seems, has now come down from 
the borders to see the Rob of the elder times well treated. We 
were obliged to tear ourselves away from his first volume,* to 
go to this ill-repaying article. But Robin Hood will still remain 
the chief and " gentlest of thieves/ 5 He acted upon a larger 
scale, or in opposition to a larger injustice, to a whole political 
system. He "shook the superflux" to the poor, and "showed 
the heavens more just." However, what we have to say of 
him, we must keep till the trees are in leaf again, and the green- 
wood shade delightful. 

We dismiss, in one rabble-like heap, the real Jonathan Wilds, 
Avershaws, and other heroes of the Newgate Calendar, who have 
no redemption in their rascality ; and after them, for gentlemen- 
valets, may go the Barringtons, Major Semples, and other 
sneaking rogues, who held on a tremulous career of iniquity, 
betwixt pilfering and repenting. Yet Jack Sheppard must not 
be forgotten, with his ingenious and daring breaks-out of prison ; 
nor Turpin, who is said to have ridden his horse with such 
swiftness from York to London, that he was enabled to set up an 
alibi. We have omitted to notice the celebrated Bucaniers of 

* Of Ivanhoe 



112 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

America ; but these are fellows, with regard to whom we are 
willing to take Dogberry's advice, and " steal out of their com- 
pany." Their history disappoints us with its dryness. 

All hail ! thou most attractive of scape-graces ! thou most 
accomplished of gentlemen of the road ! thou, worthy to be called 
one of "the minions of the moon," Monsieur Claude Du Vail, 
whom we have come such a long and dangerous journey to see ! 

Claude du Vail, according to a pleasant account of him in the 
Harleian Miscellany, was born at Domfront, in Normandy, in 
the year 1643 ? of Pierre Du Vail, miller, and Marguerite de la 
Roche, the fair daughter of a tailor. Being a sprightly boy, he 
did not remain in the country, but became servant to a person 
of quality at Paris, and with this gentleman he came over to 
England at the time of the Restoration. It is difficult to say, 
which came over to pick the most pockets and hearts, Charles 
the Second or Claude du Vail. Be this as it may, his " courses" 
of life (" for," says the contemporary historian, " I dare not call 
them vices"), soon reduced him to the necessity of going upon 
the road ; and here " he quickly became so famous, that in a 
proclamation for the taking several notorious highwaymen, he 
had the honor to be named first." " He took," says his bio- 
grapher, "the generous way of padding;" that is to say, he be- 
haved with exemplary politeness to all coaches, especially those 
in which there were ladies, making a point of frightening them 
as amiably as possible, and insisting upon returning any favorite 
trinkets or keepsakes, for which they chose to appeal to him with 
" their most sweet voices." 

It was in this character that he performed an exploit, which 
is the eternal feather in the cap of highway gentility. We will 
relate it in the words of our informer. Riding out with some of 
his confederates, " he overtakes a coach, which they had set 
over night, having intelligence of a booty of four hundred pounds 
in it. In the coach was a knight, his lady, and only one serving- 
maid, who, perceiving five horsemen making up to them, pre- 
sently imagined that they were beset ; and they were confirmed 
)n this apprehension by seeing them whisper to one another and 
ride backwards and forwards. The lady, to show she was not 
afraid, takes a flageolet out of her pocket, and plays ; Du Vail 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 113 

takes the hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a flageolet 
of his own, and in this posture he i ides up to the coach side. 
'Sir,' says he to the person in the coach, 'your lady plays 
excellently, and I doubt not but that she dances as well ; will 
you please to walk out of the coach, and let me have the honor 
to dance one coranto with her upon the heath V ' Sir/ said the 
person in the coach, ' I dare not deny anything to one of your 
quality and good mind; you seem a gentleman, and your 
request is very reasonable ;' which said, the lacquey opens the 
boot, out comes the knight, Du Vail leaps lightly off his horse, 
and hands the lady out of the coach. They danced, and here 
it was that Du Vail performed marvels ; the best master in 
London, except those that are French, not being able to show 
such footing as he did in his great riding French boots. The 
dancing being over, he waits on the lady to her coach. As the 
knight was going in, says Du Vail to him, < Sir, you have forgot 
to pay the music. 5 6 No, I have not,' replies the knight, and 
putting his hand under the seat of the coach, pulls out a hundred 
pounds in a bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vail took 
with a very good grace, and courteously answered, l Sir, you 
are liberal, and shall have no cause to repent your being so ; 
this liberality of yours shall excuse you the other three hundred 
pounds :' and giving him the word, that if he met with any 
more of the crew he might pass undisturbed, he civilly takes his 
leave of him. 

" This story, I confess, justifies the great kindness the ladies 
had for Du Vail ; for in this, as in an epitome, are contained all 
things that set a man off advantageously, and make him appear 
as the phrase is, much a gentleman. First, here was valor, that 
he and but four more durst assault a knight, a lady, a waiting- 
gentlewoman, a lacquey, a groom that rid by to open the gates, 
and the coachman, they being six to five, odds at football ; and 
besides, Du Vail had much the worst cause, and reason to 
believe, that whoever should arrive, w r ould range themselves 
on the enemy's party. Then he showed his invention and saga- 
city, that he could sur le champ, and, without studying, make 
that advantage on the lady's playing on the flageolet. He 
evinced his skill in instrumental music, by playing on his 
9 



114 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xx. 

flageolet ; in vocal, by his singing ; for (as I should have told 
you before) there being no violins, Du Vail sung the coranto 
himself. He manifested his agility of body, by lightly dis- 
mounting off his horse, and with ease and freedom getting up 
again, when he took his leave ; his excellent deportment, by his 
incomparable dancing, and his graceful manner of taking the 
hundred pounds ; his generosity in taking no more ; his wit and 
eloquence, and readiness at repartees, in the whole discourse 
with the knight and lady, the greatest part of which I have been 
forced to omit." 

The noise of the proclamation made Du Vail return to Paris ; 
but he came back in a short time for want of money. His reign, 
however, did not last long after his restoration. He made an 
unlucky attack, not upon some ill-bred passengers, but upon 
several bottles of wine, and was taken in consequence at the 
Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos-street. His life was interceded 
for in vain ; he was arraigned and committed to Newgate ; and 
executed at Tyburn in the 27th year of his age ; showers of 
tears from fair eyes bedewing his fate, both while alive in prison 
and when dead at the fatal tree. 

Du Vall's success with the ladies of those days, whose ama- 
tory taste was of a turn more extensive than delicate, seems to 
have made some well-dressed English gentlemen jealous. The 
writer of Du Vall's life, who is a man of wit, evidently has 
something of bitterness in his railleries upon this point ; but he 
manages them very pleasantly. He pretends that he is an old 
bachelor, and has never been able to make his way with his fair 
countrywomen, on account of the French valets that have stood 
in his way. He says he had two objects in writing the book. 
" One is, that the next Frenchman that is hanged, may not 
cause an uproar in this imperial city ; which I doubt not but I 
have effected. The other is a much harder task: to set my 
countrymen on even terms with the French, as to the English 
ladies' affections. If I should bring this about, I should esteem 
myself to have contributed much to the good of this kingdom. 

" One remedy there is, which, possibly, may conduce some- 
thing towards it. 

" I have heard that there is a new invention of transfusing the 



chap, xx.] THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 115 

blood of one animal into another, and that it has been experimented 
by putting the blood of a sheep into an Englishman. I am 
against that way of experiments ; for, should we make all Eng- 
lishmen sheep, we should soon be a prey to the louve. 

" 1 think I can propose the making that experiment a more 
advantageous way. I would have all gentlemen, who have 
been a full year or more out of France, be let blood weekly, or 
oftener, if they can bear it. Mark how much they bleed ; 
transfuse so much French lacquey's blood into them ; replenish 
these last out of the English footmen, for it is no matter what 
becomes of them. Repeat this operation toties quoties, and in 
process of time you will find this event: either the English 
gentlemen will be as much beloved as the French lacqueys, or 
the French lacqueys as little esteemed as the English gentle- 
men." 

Butler has left an Ode, sprinkled with his usual wit, " To the 
happy Memory of the Most Renowned Du Vail" who, 

— Like a pious man, some years before 
Th' arrival of his fatal hour, 
Made every day he had to live 
To his last minute a preparative ; 
Taught the wild Arabs on the road 
To act in a more gentle mode ; 
Take prizes more obligingly from those, 
Who never had been bred jilous ; 
And how to hang in a more graceful fashion, 
Than e'er was known before to the dull English nation 

As it may be thought proper that we should end this lawless 
article with a good moral, we will give it two or three sentences 
from Shakspeare worth a whole volume of sermons against 
thieving. The boy who belongs to Falstaff's companions, and 
who begins to see through the shallowness of their cunning and 
way of life, says that Bardolph stole a lute-case, carried it 
twelve miles, and sold it for three halfpence. 



116 THE INDICATOR. [cha*>. xxi 



CHAPTER XXL 

A few Thoughts on Sleep. 

This is an article for the reader to think of, \*hen he or she is 
warm in bed, a little before he goes to sleep, the clothes at his 
ear, and the wind moaning in some distant crevice. 

" Blessings," exclaimed Sancho, " on him that first invented 
sleep ! It wraps a man all round like a cloak." It is a deli- 
cious moment certainly — that of being well nestled in bed, and 
feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to 
come, not past ; the limbs have been just tired enough to render 
the remaining in one posture delightful : the labor of the day is 
done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes creeping over 
one : — the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and 
more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching 
her hand from that of her sleeping child ; — the mind seems to 
have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye : — 'tis closing ; — 
'tis more closing ; — 'tis closed. The mysterious spirit has gone 
to make its airy rounds. 

It is said that sleep is best before midnight ; and Nature her- 
self, with her darkness and chilling dews, informs us so. 
There is another reason for going to bed betimes : for it is 
universally acknowledged that lying late in the morning is a 
great shortener of life. At least, it is never found in company 
with longevity. It also tends to make people corpulent. But 
these matters belong rather to the subject of early rising, than 
of sleep. 

Sleep at a late hour in the morning is not half so pleasant as 
the more timely one. It is sometimes however excusable, espe- 
cially to a watchful or overworked head ; neither can we deny 
the seducing merits of " t'other doze," — the pleasing wilfulness 
of nestling in a new posture, when you know you ought to be 



chap, xxi.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. Ii7 

up, like the rest of the house. But then you cut up the day, 
and your sleep the next night. 

In the course of the day, few people think of sleeping, except 
after dinner; and then it is often rather a hovering and nodding on 
the borders of sleep than sleep itself. This is a privilege allowable,, 
we think, to none but the old, or the sickly, or the very tired and 
care-worn ; and it should be well understood, before it is exer- 
cised in company. To escape into slumber by an argument ; 
or to take it as an affair of course, only between you and your 
biliary duct ; or to assent with involuntary nods to all that you 
have just been disputing, is not so well : much less, to sit nod- 
ding and tottering beside a lady ; or to be in danger of dropping 
your head into the fruit-plate or your host's face ; or of waking 
up, and saying, "Just so," to the bark of a dog ; or " Yes, Ma- 
dam," to the black at your elbow. 

Care-worn people, however, might refresh themselves oftener 
with day-sleep than they do ; if their bodily state is such as to 
dispose them to it. It is a mistake to suppose that all care is 
wakeful. People sometimes sleep, as well as wake, by reason 
of their sorrow. The difference seems to depend upon the na- 
ture of their temperament ; though in the most excessive cases, 
sleep is perhaps Nature's never-failing relief, as swooning is 
upon the rack. A person with jaundice in his blood shall lie 
down and go to sleep at noon-day, when another of different 
complexion shall find his eyes as uncloseable as a statue's, 
though he has had no sleep for nights together. Without 
meaning to lessen the dignity of suffering, which has quite 
enough to do with its waking hours, it is this that may often ac- 
count for the profound sleeps enjoyed the night before hazard- 
ous battles, executions, and other demands upon an over-excited 
spirit. 

The most complete and healthy sleep that can be taken in the 
day, is in summer-time, out in a field. There is perhaps no 
solitary sensation so exquisite as that of slumbering on the grass 
or hay, shaded from the hot sun by a tree, with the conscious- 
ness of a fresh but light air running through the wide atmo- 
sphere, and the sky stretching far overhead upon all sides. 
Earth, and heaven, and a placid humanity, seem to have the 



118 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxi 

creation to themselves. There is nothing between the slum- 
berer and the naked and glad innocence of nature. 

Next to this, but at a long interval, the most relishing snatch 
of slumber out of bed, is the one which a tired person takes, be- 
fore he retires for the night, while lingering in his sitting-room. 
The consciousness of being very sleepy and of having the power 
to go to bed immediately, gives great zest to the unwillingness 
to move. Sometimes he sits nodding in his chair ; but the sud- 
den and leaden jerks of the head to which a state of great sleepi- 
ness renders him liable, are generally too painful for so luxuri- 
ous a moment ; and he gets into a more legitimate posture, sit- 
ting sideways with his head on the chair-back, or throwing his 
legs up at once on another chair, and half reclining. It is curi- 
ous, however, to find how long an inconvenient posture will be 
borne for the sake of this foretaste of repose. The worst of it 
is, that on going to bed, the charm sometimes vanishes ; per- 
haps from the colder temperature of the chamber ; for a fireside 
is a great opiate. 

Speaking of the painful positions into which a sleepy lounger 
will get himself, it is amusing to think of the more fantastic 
attitudes that so often take place in bed. If we could add any- 
thing to the numberless things that have been said about sleep 
by the poets, it would be upon this point. Sleep never shows 
himself a greater leveller. A man in his waking moments may 
look as proud and self-possessed as he pleases. He may walk 
proudly, he may sit proudly, he may eat his dinner proudly ; 
he may shave himself with an air of infinite superiority ; in a 
word, he may show himself grand and absurd upon the most 
trifling occasions. But Sleep plays the petrifying magician. 
He arrests the proudest lord as well as the humblest clown in 
the most ridiculous postures : so that if you could draw a gran- 
dee from his bed without waking him, no limb-twisting fool in a 
pantomime should create wilder laughter. The toy with the 
string between its legs, is hardly a posture-master more extrava- 
gant. Imagine a despot lifted up to the gaze of his valets, with 
his eyes shut, his mouth open, liis left hand under his right ear, 
his other twisted and hanging helplessly before him like an idi- 
ot's, one knee lifted up, and the other leg stretched out, or both 



chap, xxi.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP. 119 

knees huddled up together ; — what a scarecrow to lodge majes- 
tic power in ! 

But Sleep is kindly, even in his tricks ; and the poets have 
treated him with reverence. According to the ancient mycolo- 
gists, he had even one of the Graces to wife. He had a thou- 
sand sons, of whom the chief were Morpheus, or the Shaper ; 
Icelos, or the Likely ; Phantasus, the Fancy ; and Phobetor, 
the Terror. His dwelling some writers place in a dull and 
darkling part of the earth ; others, with greater compliment, in 
heaven ; and others, with another kind of propriety, by the sea- 
shore. There is a good description of it in Ovid ; but in these 
abstracted tasks of poetry, the moderns outvie the ancients ; and 
there is nobody who has built his bower for him so finely as 
Spenser. Archimago in the first book of the Faerie Queene 
(Canto I. st. 39), sends a little spirit down to Morpheus to fetch 
him a Dream : 

He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, 
And through the world of waters, wide and deepe, 
To Morpheus' house doth hastily rep aire 
Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe 
And low, where dawning day doth never peepe, 
His dwelling is. There, Tethys his wet bed 
Doth ever wash ; and Cynthia still doth steepe 
In silver dew his ever-drouping head, 
Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred 

And more to lull him in his slumber soft 
A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe, 
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft, 
Mixed with a murmuring winde, much like the soune 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoune. 
No other noise, nor people's troublous cryes, 
As still are wont to annoy the walled towne, 
Might there be heard ; but carelesse Quiet lyes, 
Wrapt in eternall silence, far from enimyes. 

Chaucer has drawn the cave of the same god with greater 
simplicity ; but nothing can have a more deep and sullen effect 
than his cliffs and cold running waters. It seems as real as an 
actual solitude, or some quaint old picture in a book of travels 



120 THE INDICATOR. * [chap. xxi. 

in Tartary. He is telling the story of Ceyx and Alcyone in the 
i)oem called his Dream. Juno tells a messenger to go to Mor- 
pheus and " bid him creep intb the body" of the drowned king, 
to let his wife know the fatal event by his apparition. 

This messenger tooke leave, and went 
Upon his way ; and never he stent 
Till he came to the dark valley, 
That stant betweene rockes twey. 
There never yet grew corne, ne gras, 
Ne tree, ne naught that aught was, 
Beast, ne man, ne naught else ; 
Save that there were a few wells 
Came running fro the cliffs adowne, 
That made a deadly sleeping soune, 
And runnen downe right by a cave, 
That was under a rocky grave, 
Amid the valley, wonder-deepe. 
There these goddis lay asleep e, 
Morpheus and Eclympasteire, 
That was the god of Sleepis heire, 
That slept and did none other worke. 

Where the credentials of this new son and heir Eclympasteire 
are to be found, we know not ; but he acts very much, it must 
be allowed, like an heir presumptive, in sleeping, and doing 
" none other work." 

We dare not trust ourselves with many quotations upon sleej 
from the poets : they are so numerous as well as beautiful 
We must content ourselves with mentioning that our two mosi 
favorite passages are one in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, admi- 
rable for its contrast to a scene of terrible agony, which it closes ; 
and the other the following address in Beaumont and Fletcher's 
tragedy of Valentinian, the hero of which is also a sufferer under 
bodily torment. He is in a chair, slumbering ; and these most 
exquisite lines are gently sung with music. 

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, 
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose 
On this afflicted prince. Fall like a cloud 
In gentle showers : give nothing that is loud 
Or painful to his slumbers : easy, sweet, 



chap, xxi.] A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP 121 

And as a purling stream, thou son of Night, 
Pass by his troubled senses ; sing his pain 
Like hollow murmuring wind, or silver rain : 
Into this prince, gently, oh gently slide, 
And kiss him into slumbers, like a bride. 

How earnest and prayer-like are these pauses ! How lightly 
sprinkled, and yet how deeply settling, like rain, the fancy ! 
How quiet, affectionate, and perfect the conclusion ! 

Sleep is most graceful in an infant ; soundest, in one who has 
been tired in the open air ; completest, to the seaman after a hard 
voyage ; most welcome, to the mind haunted with one idea ; 
most touching to look at, in the parent that has wept ; lightest, 
in the playful child ; proudest, in the bride adored. 



122 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxii 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The Fair Revenge. 

The elements of this story are to be found in the old poem called 
Albion's England, to which we referred in the article on Charles 
Brandon and Mary Queen of France. 

Aganippus, king of Argos, dying without heirs male, be- 
queathed his throne to his only daughter, the beautiful and be- 
loved Daphles. This female succession was displeasing to a 
nobleman who held large possessions on the frontiers ; and he 
came for the first time towards the court, not to pay his respects 
to the new queen, but to give her battle. Doracles (for that was 
his name) was not much known by the people. He had distin- 
guished himself for as jealous an independence as a subject 
could well assume ; and though he had been of use in repelling 
invasion during the latter years of the king, he had never made 
his appearance to receive his master's thanks personally. A 
correspondence, however, was understood to have gone on be- 
tween him and several noblemen about the court; and there 
were those who, in spite of his inattention to popularity, sus- 
pected that it would go hard with the young queen, when the 
two armies came face to face. 

But neither these subtle statesmen, nor the ambitious young 
soldier Doracles, were aware of the effects to be produced by a 
strong personal attachment. The young queen, amiable as she 
was beautiful, had involuntarily baffled his expectations from 
her courtiers, by exciting in the minds of some a real disinte- 
rested regard, while others nourished a hope of sharing her 
throne instead. At least they speculated upon becoming each 
the favorite minister, and held it a better thing to reign under 
that title and a charming mistress, than be the servants of a 
master, wilful and domineering. By the people she was adored ; 



chap, xxii.] THE FAIR REVENGE. 123 

and when she came riding out of her palace on the morning of 
the fight, with an unaccustomed spear standing up in its rest by 
her side, her diademed hair flowing a little off into the wind, her 
face paler than usual, but still tinted with its roses, and a look 
in which confidence in the love of her subjects, and tenderness 
for the wounds they were going to encounter, seemed to contend 
for the expression, the shout which they sent up would have told 
a stouter heart than a traitor's that the royal chamber was 
secure. 

The queen, during tne conflict, remained in a tent upon an 
eminence, to which the younger leaders vied who should best 
spur up their smoking horses, to bring her good news from time 
to time. The battle was short and bloody. Doracles soon found 
that he had miscalculated his point ; and all his skill and resolu- 
tion could not set the error to rights. It was allowed, that if 
either courage or military talent could entitle him to the throne, 
he would have a right to it ; but the popularity of Daphles sup- 
plied her cause with all the ardor which a lax state of subjec- 
tion on the part of the more powerful nobles might have denied 
it. When her troops charged, or made any other voluntary 
movement, they put all their hearts into their blows ; and when 
they were compelled to await the enemy, they stood as inflexible 
as walls of iron. It was like hammering upon metal statuary ; 
or staking the fated horses upon spears riveted in stone. Dora- 
cles was taken prisoner. The queen, re-issuing from her tent, 
crowned with laurel, came riding down the eminence, and re- 
mained at the foot with her generals, while the prisoners were 
taken by. Her pale face kept as royal a countenance of com- 
posed pity as she could manage, while the commoner rebels 
passed along, aching with their wounded arms fastened behind, 
and shaking back their bloody and blinding locks for want of a 
hand to part them. But the blood mounted to her cheeks, when 
the proud and handsome Doracles, whom she now saw for the 
first time, blushed deeply as he cast a glance at his female con- 
queror, and then stepped haughtily along, hardling his gilded 
chains, as if they were an indifferent ornament. " I have con- 
quered him," thought she ; v it is a heavy blow to so proud a 
head ; and as he looks not unamiable, it might be politic, as well 



124 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxii. 

as courteous and kind in me, to turn his submission into a more 
willing one." Alas ! pity was helping admiration to a kinder 
set of offices than the generous-hearted queen suspected. The 
captive went to his prison a conqueror after all, for Daphles 
loved him. 

The second night, after having exhibited in her manners a 
strange mixture of joy and seriousness, and signified to her 
counsellors her intention of setting the prisoner free, she releas- 
ed him with her own hands. Many a step did she hesitate as 
she went down the stairs ; and when she came to the door, she 
*hed a full, but soft, and, as it seemed to her, a wilful and 
refreshing flood of tears, humbling herself for her approaching 
.ask. When she had entered, she blushed deeply, and then 
,urning as pale, stood for a minute silent and without emotion. 
3he then said, " Thy queen, Doracles, has come to show thee 
how kindly she can treat a great and gallant subject, who did 
«iot know her ;" and with these words, and almost before she 
was aware, the prisoner was released, and preparing to go. He 
ippeared surprised, but not off his guard, nor in any temper to 
be over grateful. " Name," said he, " O queen, the conditions 
on which I depart, and they will be faithfully kept." Daphles 
moved her lips, but they spoke not. She waved her head and 
hand with a deadly smile, as if freeing him from all conditions, 
and he was turning to go, when she fell senseless on the floor. 
The haughty warrior raised her with more impatience than good- 
will. He could guess at love in a woman ; but he had but a 
mean opinion both of it and her sex ; and the deadly struggle in 
the heart of Daphles did not help him to distinguish the romantic 
passion which had induced her to put all her past and virgin 
notions of love into his person, from the commonest liking that 
might flatter his soldierly vanity. 

The queen, on awaking from her swoon, found herself com- 
pelled, in very justice to the intensity of a true passion, to ex- 
plain how pity had brought it upon her. " I might ask it," said 
she, " Doracles, in return/' and here she resumed something 
of her queen-like dignity ; " but I feel that my modesty will be 
sufficiently saved by the name of your wife ; and a substantial 
throne, with a return that shall nothing perplex or interfere with 



chap, xxii.] THE FAIR REVENGE. • 125 

thee, I do now accordingly offer thee, not as the condition of thy 
freedom, but as a diversion of men's eyes and thoughts from 
what they will think ill in me, if they find me rejected." And 
in getting out that hard word, her voice faltered a little, and her 
eyes filled with tears. 

Doracles, with the best grace his lately-defeated spirit could 
assume, spoke in willing terms of accepting her offer. They 
left the prison, and his full pardon having been proclaimed, the 
courtiers, with feasts and entertainments, vied who should seem 
best to approve their mistress's choice, for so they were quick to 
understand it. The late captive, who was really as graceful and 
accomplished as a proud spirit would let him be, received and 
returned all their attention in princely sort, and Daphles was 
beginning to hope that he might turn a glad eye upon her some 
day, when news was brought her that he had gone from court, 
nobody knew whither. The next intelligence was too certain. 
He had passed the frontiers, and was leaguing with her enemies 
for another struggle. 

From that day gladness, though not kindness, went out of the 
face of Daphles. She wrote him a letter, without a word of re- 
proach in it, enough to bring back the remotest heart that had 
the least spark of sympathy ; but he only answered it in a spirit 
which showed that he regarded the deepest love but as a wanton 
trifle. That letter touched her kind wits. She had had a paper 
drawn up, leaving him her throne in case she should die ; but 
some of her ministers, availing themselves of her enfeebled 
spirit, had summoned a meeting of the nobles, at which she was 
to preside in the dress she wore on the day of victory, the sight of 
which, it was thought, with the arguments which they meant to use, 
would prevail upon the assembly to urge her to a revocation of 
the bequest. Her women dressed her whilst she was almost un- 
conscious of what they were doing, for she had now begun to 
fade quickly, body as well as mind. They put on her the 
white garments edged with silver waves, in remembrance of the 
stream of Inachus, the founder of the Argive monarchy ; the 
spear was brought out, to be stuck by the side of the throne, 
instead of the sceptre ; and their hands prepared to put the same 
laurel on her head which bound its healthy white temples when 



126 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxii 

she sat on horseback and saw the prisoner go by. But at sight 
of its twisted and withered green, she took it in her hand, and 
looking about her in her chair with an air of momentary recol- 
lection, began picking it, and letting the leaves fall upon the 
floor. She went on thus, leaf after leaf, looking vacantly down- 
wards, and when she had stripped the circle half round, she 
leaned her cheek against the side of her sick chair, and shutting 
her eyes quietly, so died. 

The envoys from Argos went to the court of Calydon, where 
Doracles then was, and bringing him the diadem upon a black 
cushion, informed him at once of the death of the queen, and her 
nomination of him to the throne. He showed little more than a 
ceremonious gravity at the former news ; but could ill contain 
his joy at the latter, and set off instantly to take possession. 
Among the other nobles who feasted him, was one who, having 
been the companion of the late king, had become a second father 
to his unhappy daughter. The new prince observing the me- 
lancholy which he scarcely affected to repress, and seeing him 
look up occasionally at a picture which had a veil over it, asked 
him what the picture was that seemed to disturb him so, and 
why it was veiled. u If it be the portrait of the late king," 
said Doracles, " pray think me worthy of doing honor to it, for 
he was a noble prince. Unveil it, pray. I insist upon it. What ! 
am I not worthy to look upon my predecessors, Phorbas ?" And 
at these words he frowned impatiently. Phorbas, with a trem- 
bling hand, but not for want of courage, withdrew the black 
covering ; and the portrait of Daphles, in all her youth and 
beauty, flashed upon the eyes of Doracles. It was not a melan- 
choly face. It was drawn before misfortune had touched it, and 
sparkled with a blooming beauty, in which animal spirits and 
good-nature contended for predominance. Doracles paused and 
seemed struck. " The possessor of that face," said he, inquir- 
ing, " could never have been so sorrowful as I have heard ?" 
" Pardon me, sir," answered Phorbas, " I was as another father 
to her, and knew all." "It cannot be," returned the prince. 
The old man begged his other guests to withdraw a while, and then 
told Doracles how many fond and despairing things the queen 
had said of him, both before her wits began to fail and after. 



chap, xxii.] THE FAIR REVENGE. 127 

" Her wits to fail !" murmured the king ; " I have known what 
it is to feel almost a mad impatience of the will ; but I knew 
not that these gentle creatures, women, could so feel for such a 
trifle." Phorbas brought out the laurel-crown, and told him 
how the half of it became bare. The impatient blood of Dora- 
cles mounted, but not in anger, to his face ; and, breaking up 
the party, he requested that the picture might be removed to his 
own chamber, promising to return it. 

A whole year, however, did he keep it ; and as he had no 
foreign enemies to occupy his time, nor was disposed to enter into 
the common sports of peace, it was understood that he spent the 
greatest part of his time, when he was not in council, in the room 
where the picture hung. In truth, the image of the once smil- 
ing Daphles haunted him, wherever he went ; and to ease him- 
self of the yearning of wishing her alive again and seeing hei 
face, he was in the habit of being with it as much as possible. 
His self-will turned upon him, even in that gentle shape. Mil- 
lions of times did he wish back the loving author of his fortunes, 
whom he had treated with so clownish an ingratitude ; and mil- 
lions of times did the sense of the impotence of his wish run up 
in red hurry to his cheeks, and help to pull them into a gaunt 
melancholy. But this is not a repaying sorrow to dwell upon. 
He was one day, after being in vain expected at council, found 
lying madly on the floor of the room, dead. He had torn the 
portrait from the wall. His dagger was in his heart, and his 
cheek lay upon that blooming and smiling face, which, had it 
been living, would never have looked so at being revenged. 



128 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxii 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Spirit of the Ancient Mythology. 

From having a different creed of our own, and always encoun- 
tering the heathen mythology in a poetical and fabulous shape, 
we are apt to have a false idea of the religious feeling of the 
ancients. We are in the habit of supposing, whatever we allow 
when we come to reason upon the point, that they regarded 
their fables in the same poetical light as ourselves ; that they 
could not possibly put faith in Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto ; in 
the sacrifice of innocent turtle-doves, the libation of wine, and 
the notions about Tartarus and Ixion. 

Undoubtedly there were multitudes of free thinkers in the 
ancient world. Most of the Greek poets and philosophers 
appear to have differed with the literal notions of the many.* 
A system of refined theism is understood to have been taught to 
the initiated in the celebrated Mysteries. The doctrines of 
Epicurus were so prevalent in the most intellectual age of 
Rome, that Lucretius wrote a poem upon them, in which he 
treats their founder as a divinity ; and Virgil, in the well-known 
passage of the Georgics, " Felix qui potuit," &c, exalts either 
Epicurus or Lucretius as a blessed being, who put hell and 
terroi under his feet. A sickly temperament appears to have 
made him wish, rather than be able, to carry his own scepticism 
so far : yet he insinuates his belief in Tartarus, in the sixth 
book of his epic poem, where iEneas and the Sibyl, after the 

* It is remarkable that JEschylus and Euripides, the two dramatists 
whose faith in the national religion was most doubted, are said to have met 
with strange and violent deaths. The latter was torn to pieces by dogs, and 
the former killed by a tortoise which an eagle let fall upon his bald head, 
in mistake for a stone. These exits from the scene look very like the 
retributive death-beds which the bigots of all religions are so fond of ascrib- 
ing to one another. 



chap, xxin.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 129 

description of the lower world, go out through the ivory gate, 
which was the passage of false visions.* Caesar, according to 
a speech of his in Sallust, derided the same notions in open 
senate ; and Cicero, in other parts of his writings, as well as in 
a public pleading, speaks of them as fables and impertinence, — 
" ineptiis ac fabulis." 

But however this plain-dealing may look on the part of the 
men of letters, there is reason to believe, that even in those 
times, the people, in general, were strong upon the points of 
faith. The extension of the Greek philosophy may have insen- 
sibly rendered them familiar with latitudes of interpretation on 
the part of others. They would not think it impious in Cicero 
and Cato to have notions of the Supreme Being more consistent 
with the elevation of their minds. But for themselves, they 
adhered from habit, to the literal creed of their ancestors, as the 
Greek populace had done before them. The jealous enemies 
of Socrates contrived to have him put to death on a charge of 
irreverence for the gods. A frolic of the libertine Alcibiades, 
which, to say the least of it, was in bad taste — the defacing the 
statues of Mercury — was followed with important consequences. 
The history of Socrates had the effect, in after times, at least in 
the ancient world, of saving philosophical speculators from the 
vindictive egotism of opinion. But even in the days of Augus- 
tus, Ovid wrote a popular work full of mythological fables ; 
and Virgil himself, whose creed, perhaps, only rejected what 
was unkindly, gave the hero of his intended popular epic the 
particular appellation of pious. That Augustus should pique 
himself on the same attribute proves little ; for he was a cold- 
blooded man of the world, and could play the hypocrite for the 
worst and most despotic purposes. Did he now and then lecture 
his poetical friends upon this point, respecting their own appear. 
ances with the world ? There is a curious ode of Horace 
(Book I., Ode xxxiv.), m which he says, that he finds himself 
compelled to give up his sceptical notions, and to attend more 
to public worship, because it had thundered one day when the 

* Did Dante forget this, when he took Virgil for his guide through the 
Inferno ? 

10 



130 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxiii 

sky was cloudless. The critics are divided in their opinion of 
his object in this ode. Some think him in earnest, others in 
jest. It is the only thing of the sort in his works, and is, at all 
events, of an equivocal character, that would serve his purpose 
on either side of the question. 

The opinions of the ancients upon religion may be divided 
into three general classes. The great multitude believed any- 
thing ; the very few disbelieved everything ; the philosophers 
and poets entertained a refined natural religion, which, while it 
pronounced upon nothing, rejected what was evidently unworthy 
of the spirit of creation, and regarded the popular deities as 
personifications of its various workings. All these classes had 
their extravagances, in proportion to their ignorance, or vicious- 
ness, or metaphysical perplexity. The multitude, whose no- 
tions were founded on ignorance, habit, and fear, admitted many 
absurd, and some cruel imaginations. The mere man of the 
world measured everything by his own vain and petty standard, 
and thought the whole goods of the universe a scramble for the 
cunning and hypocritical. The over-refining followers of Plato, 
endeavoring to pierce into the nature of things by the mere 
effort of the will, arrived at conclusions visible to none but 
their own yearning and impatient eyes, and lost themselves in 
the ethereal dogmatisms of Plotinus and Porphyry. 

The greatest pleasure arising to a modern imagination from 
the ancient mythology, is in a mingled sense of the old popular 
belief and of the philosophical refinements upon it. We take 
Apollo, and Mercury, and Venus, as shapes that existed in popu- 
lar credulity, as the greater fairies of the ancient world : and 
we regard them at the same time, as personifications of all that 
is beautiful and genial in the forms and tendencies of creation. 
But the result, coming as it does, too, through avenues of beau- 
tiful poetry, both ancient and modern, is so entirely cheerful, 
*that we are apt to think it must have wanted gravity to more 
believing eyes. We fancy that the old world saw nothing in 
religion but lively and graceful shapes, as remote from the 
more obscure and awful hintings of the world unknown, as 
physics appear to be from the metaphysical ; as the eye of a 



chap, xxm.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 131 

beautiful woman is from the inward speculations of a Brahmin ; 
or a lily at noonday from the wide obscurity of night-time. 

This supposition appears to be carried a great deal too far. 
We will not inquire, in this place, how far the mass of mankind, 
when these shapes were done away, did or did not escape 
from a despotic anthropomorphitism ; nor how far they were 
driven by the vaguer fears, and the opening of a more visible 
eternity, into avoiding the whole subject, rather than courting 
it ; nor how it is, that the nobler practical religion which was 
afforded them, has been unable to bring back their frightened 
theology from the angry and avaricious pursuits into which they 
fled for refuge. But, setting aside the portion of terror, of which 
heathenism partook in common with all faiths originating in 
uncultivated times, the ordinary run of pagans were perhaps 
more impressed with a sense of the invisible world, in conse- 
quence of the very visions presented to their imagination, than 
the same description of men under a more shadowy system. 
There is the same difference between the two things, as between 
a populace believing in fairies, and a populace not believing. 
The latter is in the high road to something better, if not drawn 
aside into new terrors on the one hand or mere worldliness on 
the other. But the former is led to look out of the mere worldly 
common-places about it, twenty times to the other's once. It 
has a sense of a supernatural state of things, however gross. 
It has a link with another world, from which something like 
gravity is sure to strike into the most cheerful heart. Every 
forest, to the mind's eye of a Greek, was haunted with superior 
intelligences. Every stream had its presiding nymph, who was 
thanked for the draught of water. Every house had its pro- 
tecting gods, which had blessed the inmate's ancestors, and 
which would bless him also, if he cultivated the social affec- 
tions : for the same word which expressed piety towards the 
Gods expressed love towards relations and friends. If in all* 
this there was nothing but the worship of a more graceful hu- 
manity, there may be worships much worse as well as much 
better. And the divinest spirit that ever appeared on earth has 
told us that the extension of human sympathy embraces all that 
is required of us, either to do or to foresee. 



132 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxiii 

Imagine the feelings with which an ancient believer must 
have gone by the oracular oaks of Dodona ; or the calm groves 
of the Eumenides ; or the fountain where Proserpine vanished 
under ground with Pluto ; or the Great Temple of the myste- 
ries at Eleusis; or the laurelled mountain Parnassus, on the 
side of which was the temple of Delphi, where Apollo was sup- 
posed to be present in person. Imagine Plutarch, a devout and 
yet a liberal believer, when he went to study theology and phi- 
losophy at Delphi : with what feelings must he not have passed 
along the woody paths of the hill, approaching nearer every 
instant to the divinity, and not sure that a glance of light 
through the trees was not the lustre of the god himself going 
by ! This is mere poetry to us, and very fine it is ; but to him 
it was poetry, and religion, and beauty, and gravity, and hush- 
ing awe, and a path as from one world to another. 

With similar feelings he would cross the ocean, an element 
that naturally detaches the mind from earth, and which the an- 
cients regarded as especially doing so. He had been in the 
Carpathian sea, the favorite haunt of Proteus, who was sup- 
posed to be gifted above every other deity with a knowledge of 
the causes of things. Towards evening, when the winds were 
rising, and the sailors had made their vows to Neptune, he 
would think of the old " shepherd of the seas of yore," and 
believe it possible that he might become visible to his eye- 
sight, driving through the darkling waters, and turning the 
sacred wildness of his face towards the blessed ship. 

In all this, there is a deeper sense of another world, than in 
the habit of contenting oneself with a few vague terms and em- 
bodying but Mammon. There is a deeper sense of another 
world, precisely because there is a deeper sense of the present ; 
of its varieties, its benignities, its mystery. It was a strong 
sense of this, which made a living poet, who is accounted very 
orthodox in his religious opinions, give vent, in that fine sonnet, 
to his impatience at seeing the beautiful planet we live upon, 
with all its starry wonders about it, so little thought of, com- 
pared with what is ridiculously called the world. He seems to 
have dreaded the symptom, as an evidence of materialism, and 
of the planets being dry self-existing things, peopled with mere 



chap, xxiii.] SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 133 

successive mortalities, and unconnected with any superin- 
tendence or consciousness in the universe about them. It is 
abhorrent from all we think and feel, that they should be so : 
and yet Love might make heavens of them, if they were. 

" The world is too much with us. Late and soon, 
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see in Nature that is ours : 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up -gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 



134 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxiv. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Getting up on Cold Mornings. 

An Italian author — Giulio Cordara, a Jesuit — has written a 
poem upon insects, which he begins by insisting, that those trou- 
blesome and abominable little animals were created for our 
annoyance, and that they were certainly not inhabitants of 
Paradise. We of the north may dispute this piece of theology : 
but on the other hand, it is as clear as the snow on the house- 
tops, that Adam was not under the necessity of shaving ; and 
that when Eve walked out of her delicious bower, she did not 
step upon ice three inches thick. 

Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold 
morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the resolution ; 
and the thing is done. This may be very true ; just as a boy at 
school has only to take a flogging, and the thing is over. But 
we have not at all made up our minds upon it ; and we find it 
a very pleasant exercise to discuss the matter, candidly, before 
we get up. This at least is not idling, though it may be lying. 
It affords an excellent answer to those, who ask how lying in 
bed can be indulged in by a reasoning being — a rational crea- 
ture. How ! Why with the argument calmly at work in one's 
head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh ! it is a fine way 
of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. 

If these people would be more charitable, they would get on 
with their argument better. But they are apt to reason so ill, 
and to assert so dogmatically, that one could wish to have them 
stand round one's bed of a bitter morning, and lie before their 
faces. They ought to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and 
out. If they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts 
for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. 

Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the greater 
or less privileges to be allowed a man in proportion to his ability 



chap, xxiv.] GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS. 135 

of keeping early hours, the work given his faculties, dec., will at 
least concede their due merits to such representations as the follow- 
ing. In the first place, says the injured but calm appealer, I have 
been warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly suita- 
ble to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, 
besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transi- 
tion, is so unnatural to such a creature, that the poets, refining 
upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest 
agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold 
— from fire to ice. They are " haled" out of their " beds," says 
Milton, by " harpy-footed furies," — fellows who come to call 
them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting 
up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster as are exposed 
to the air of the room, are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the 
first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if 
in the open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this 
symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways, and see the window 
all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. 
" It is very cold this morning, is it not ?" — " Very cold, sir." — 
" Very cold indeed, isn't it ?" — " Very cold indeed, sir." — 
" More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather V s Here 
the servant's wit and good nature are put to a considerable test, 
and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) "Why, sir, 

I think it is." (Good creature ! There is not a better, 

or more truth-telling servant going.) " I must rise, however — 
get me some warm water." — Here comes a fine interval between 
the departure of the servant and the arrival of the hot water ; 
during which, of course, it is of "no use ?" to get up. The hot 
water comes. " Is it quite hot ?" — " Yes, sir." — " Perhaps too 
hot for shaving ; I must wait a little ?" — " No, sir, it will just 
do." (There is an over-nice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal 
of virtue, a little troublesome.) " Oh — the shirt — you must air 
my clean shirt; — linen gets very damp this weather." — "Yes, 
sir." Here another delicious five minutes. A knock at the 
door. " Oh, the shirt — very well. My stockings — I think the 
stockings had better be aired too." — " Very well, sir." — Here 
another interval. At length everything is ready, except my- 
self. I now, continues ou ■ incumbent (a happy word, by the 



136 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxiv 

bye, for a country vicar) — I now cannot help thinking a good 
deal — who can ? — upon the unnecessary and villainous custom 
of shaving : it is a thing so unmanly (here I nestle closer) — so 
effeminate (here I recoil from an unlucky step into the colder 
part of the bed). — No wonder that the Queen of France took 
part with the rebels against that degenerate King, her husband, 
who first affronted her smooth visage with a face like her own. 
The Emperor Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius 
to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. Look 
at Cardinal Bembo's picture — at Michael Angelo's — at Titian's 
— at Shakspeare's — at Fletcher's — at Spenser's — at Chaucer* s 
— at Alfred's — at Plato's — I could name a great man for every 
tick of my watch. — Look at the Turks, a grave and otiose peo- 
ple. — Think of Haroun Al Raschid and Bed-ridden Hassan. — 
Think of Wortley Montague, the worthy son of his mother, 
above the prejudice of his time. — Look at the Persian gentlemen, 
whom one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress 
and appearance are so much finer than our own. — Lastly, think 
of the razor itself — how totally opposed to every sensation of 
bed — how cold, how edgy, how hard ! how utterly different from 
anything like the warm and circling amplitude, which 

Sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to cut your- 
self, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer full of ice ; 
and he that says there is nothing to oppose in all this, only 
shows that he has no merit in opposing it. 

Thomson, the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons — 

Falsely luxurious ! Will not man awake ? 

used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no motive in 
getting up. He could imagine the good of rising; but then he 
could also imagine the good of lying still ; and his exclamation, 
it must be allowed, was made upon summer-time, not winter. 
We must, proportion the argument to the individual character. 
A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or foui 



chap, xxiv.] GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS. 137 

pence ; but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man 
may say, " What shall I think of myself, if I don't get up 1" 
but the more humble one will be content to waive this prodigious 
notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly bed. The mecha,- 
nical man shall get up without any ado at all ; and so shall the 
barometer. An ingenious lier in bed will find hard matter of 
discussion even on the score of health and longevity. He will 
ask us for our proofs and precedents of the ill effects of lying 
later in cold weather; and sophisticate much on the advantages 
of an even temperature of body ; of the natural propensity 
(pretty universal) to have one's way ; and of the animals that 
roll themselves up, and sleep all the winter. As to longevity, 
he will ask whether the longest is of necessity the best ; and 
whether Holborn is the handsomest street in London. 



13S THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxv 



CHAPTER XXV. 

The Old Gentleman. 

Our Old Gentleman, in order to be exclusively himself, must be 
either a widower or a bachelor. Suppose the former. We do 
not mention his precise age, which would be invidious ; — nor 
whether he wears his own hair or a wig ; which would be 
wanting in universality. If a wig, it is a compromise between 
the more modern scratch and the departed glory of the toupee. 
If his own hair, it is white, in spite of his favorite grandson, who 
used to get on the chair behind him, and pull the silver hairs out, 
ten years ago. If he is bald at top, the hair-dresser, hovering 
and breathing about him like a second youth, takes care to give 
the bald place as much powder as the covered; in order that he 
may convey to the sensorium within a pleasing indistinctness of 
idea respecting the exact limits of skin and hair. He is very 
clean and neat ; and, in warm weather, is proud of opening his 
waistcoat half-way down, and letting so much of his frill be 
seen, in order to show his hardiness as well as taste. His watch 
and shirt-buttons are of the best ; and he does not care if he has 
two rings on a finger. If his watch ever failed him at the club 
or coffee-house, he would take a walk every day to the nearest 
clock of good character, purely to keep it right. He has a cane 
at home, but seldom uses it, on finding it out of fashion with his 
elderly juniors. He has a small cocked hat for gala days, which 
he lifts higher from his head than the round one, when bowed 
to. In his pockets are two handkerchiefs (one for the neck at 
night-time), his spectacles and his pocket-book- The pocket- 
book, among other things, contains a receipt for a cough, and 
some verses cut out of an odd sheet of an old magazine, on the 
lovely Duchess of A., beginning — 

When beauteous Mira walks the plain. 



chap, xxv.] THE OLD GENTLEMAN. 139 

He intends this for a common-place book which he keeps, con- 
sisting of passages in verse and prose, cut out of newspapers 
and magazines, and pasted in columns; some of them rather 
gay . His principal other books are, Shakspeare's Plays and 
Milton's Paradise Lost; the Spectator, the History of England, 
the Works of Lady M. W. Montague, Pope and Churchill; 
Middleton's Geography ; the Gentleman's Magazine ; Sir John 
Sinclair on Longevity ; several plays with portraits in charac- 
ter : Account of Elizabeth Canning, Memoirs of George Ann 
Bellamy, Poetical Amusements at Bath-Easton, Blair's Works, 
Elegant Extracts ; Junius, as originally published ; a few 
pamphlets on the American War and Lord George Gordon, &c, 
and one on the French Revolution. In his sitting-rooms are 
some engravings from Hogarth and Sir Joshua ; an engraved 
portrait of the Marquis of Granby ; ditto M. le Comte de Grasse 
surrendering to Admiral Rodney ; a humorous piece after 
Penny ; and a portrait of himself, painted by Sir Joshua. His 
wife's portrait is in his chamber, looking upon his bed. She is 
a little girl, stepping forward with a smile, and a pointed toe, as 
if going to dance. He lost her when she was sixty. 

The Old Gentleman is an early riser, because he intends to 
live at least twenty years longer. He continues to take tea for 
breakfast, in spite of what is said against its nervous effects ; 
having been satisfied on that point some years ago by Dr. John- 
son's criticism on Hanway, and a great liking for tea previously. 
His china cups and saucers have been broken since his wife's 
death, all but one, which is religiously kept for his use. He 
passes his morning in walking or riding, looking in at auctions, 
looking after his India bonds or some such money securities, 
furthering some subscription set on foot by his excellent friend 
Sir John, or cheapening a new old print for his portfolio. He 
also hears of the newspapers ; not caring to see them till after 
dinner at the coffee-house. He may also cheapen a fish or so; 
the fishmonger soliciting his doubtful eye as he passes, with a 
profound bow of recognition. He eats a pear before dinner. 

His dinner at the coffee-house is served up to him at the 
accustomed hour, in the old accustomed way, and by the accus- 
tomed waiter. If William did rot bring it, the fish would be 



140 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxv 

sure to be stale, and the flesh new. He eats no tart ; or if he 
ventures on a little, takes cheese with it. You might as soon 
attempt to persuade him out of his senses, as that cheese is not 
good for digestion. He takes port ; and if he has drunk more 
than usual, and in a more private place, may be induced by 
some respectful inquiries respecting the old style of music, to 
sing a song composed by Mr. Oswald or Mr. Lampe, such as — 

Chloe, by that borrowed kiss, 
or 

Come, gentle god of soft repose, 

or his wife's favorite ballad, beginning — 

At Upton on the hill, 
There lived a happy pair. 

Of course, no such exploit can take place in the coffee-room ; 
but he will canvass the theory of that matter there with you, or 
discuss the weather, or the markets, or the theatres, or the merits 
of " my lord North," or " my lord Rockingham ;" for he rarely 
says simply, lord ; it is generally " my lord," trippingly and 
genteelly off the tongue. If alone after dinner, his great delight 
is the newspaper; which he prepares to read by wiping his 
spectacles, carefully adjusting them on his eyes, and drawing 
the candle close to him, so as to stand sideways betwixt his ocu- 
lar aim and the small type. He then holds the paper at arm's 
length, and dropping his eyelids half down and his mouth half 
open, takes cognizance of the day's information. If he leaves 
off, it is only when the door is opened by a new-comer, or when 
he suspects somebody is over-anxious to get the paper out of his 
hand. On these occasions he gives an important hem ! or so; 
and resumes. 

In the evening, our Old Gentleman is fond of going to the 
theatre, or of having a game of cards. If he enjoys the latter 
at his own house or lodgings, he likes to play with some friends 
whom he has known for many years ; but an elderly stranger 
may be introduced, if quiet and scientific ; and the privilege is 



chap, xxv.] THE OLD GENTLEMAN 141 

extended to younger men of letters; wh:, if ill players, are 
good losers. Not that he is a miser, but to win money at cards 
is- like proving his victory by getting the baggage ; and to win 
of a younger man is a substitute for his not being able to beat 
him at rackets. He breaks up early, whether at home or 
abroad. 

At the theatre, he likes a front row in the pit. He. comes 
early, if he can do so without getting into a squeeze, and sits 
patiently waiting for the drawing up of the curtain, with his 
hands placidly lying one over the other on the top of his stick. 
He generously admires some of the best performers, but thinks 
them far inferior to Garrick, Woodward, and Clive. During 
splendid scenes, he is anxious that the little boy should see. 

He has been induced to look in at Yauxhall again, but likes it 
still less than he did years back, and cannot bear it in compari- 
son with Ranelagh. He thinks everything looks poor, flaring, 
and jaded. " Ah !" says he, with a sort of triumphant sigh, 
" Ranelagh was a noble place ! Such taste, such elegance, such 
beauty ! There was the Duchess of A., the finest woman in 
England, sir ; and Mrs. L., a mighty fine creature ; and Lady 
Susan what's her name, that had that unfortunate affair with Sir 
Charles. Sir, they came swimming by you like the swans." 

The Old Gentleman is very particular in having his slippers 
ready for him at the fire, when he comes home. He is also 
extremely choice in his snuff, and delights to get a fresh box- full 
in Tavistock-street, in his way to the theatre. His box is a 
curiosity from India. He calls favorite young ladies by their 
Christian names, however slightly acquainted with them ; and 
has a privilege of saluting all brides, mothers, and indeed every 
species of lady, on the least holiday occasion. If the husband 
for instance has met with a piece of luck, he instantly moves 
forward, and gravely kisses the wife on the cheek. The wife 
then says, " My niece, sir, from the country;" and he kisses 
the niece. The niece, seeing her cousin biting her lips at the 
joke, says, " My cousin Harriet, sir ;" and he kisses the cousin. 
He "never recollects such weather," except during the " Great 
Frost," or when he rode down with " Jack Skrimshire to New- 
market." He grows young again in his little grand-children, 



142 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxvi. 

especially the one which he thinks most like himself; which is 
the handsomest. Yet he likes best perhaps the one most resem- 
bling his wife ; and will sit with him on his lap, holding his 
hand in silence, for a quarter of an hour together. He plays 
most tricks with the former, and makes him sneeze. He asks 
little boys in general who was the father of Zebedee's children. 
If his grandsons are at school, he often goes to see them ; and 
makes them blush by telling the master or the upper-scholars, 
that they are fine boys, and of a precocious genius. He is 
much struck when an old acquaintance dies, but adds that he 
lived too fast ; and that poor Bob was a sad dog in his youth ; 
" a very sad dog, sir ; mightily set upon a short life and a merry 
one." 

When he gets very old indeed, he will sit for whole evenings, 
and say little or nothing ; but informs you, that there is Mrs. 
Jones (the housekeeper) — " SAe'll talk." 



chap, xxvii.] DOLPHINS. 143 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Dolphins. 

Our old book-friend, the Dolphin, used to be confounded with 
the porpus ; but modern writers seem to concur in making a dis- 
tinction between them. We remember being much mortified at 
this separation ; for having, in our childhood, been shown some- 
thing dimly rolling in the sea, while standing on the coast at 
twilight, and told with much whispering solemnity that it was a 
porpus, we had afterwards learnt to identify it with the Dolphin, 
and thought w T e had seen the romantic fish on whom Arion rode 
playing his harp. 

Spenser introduces Arion most beautifully, in all his lyrical 
pomp, in the marriage of the Thames and Medway. He goes 
before the bride, smoothing onwards with the sound of his harp, 
like the very progress of the water. 

Then there was heard a most celestiall sound 
Of dainty musicke, which did next ensue 
Before the Spouse. That was Arion crowned : 
Who, playing on his harp, unto him drew 
The eares and hearts of all that goodly crew ; 
That even yet the Dolphin, which him bore 
Through the JSgean seas from pirates' view, 
Stood still by him astonished at his lore ; 
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar. 

So went he, playing on the watery plain. 

Perhaps in no one particular thing or image, have some great 
poets shown the different characters of their genius more than 
in the use of the Dolphin. Spenser, who of all his tribe lived 
in a poetical world, and saw things as clearly there as in a real 
one, has never shown this nicety of realization more than in the 



144 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxvii. 

following passage. He speaks of his Dolphins with as familiar 
a detail, as if they were horses waiting at a door with an 
equipage. 

A team of Dolphins ranged in array- 
Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent. 
They were all taught by Triton to obey 
To the long reins of her commandement : 
As swift as swallows on the waves they went, 
That their broad flaggy finnes no foam did reare, 
Ne bubbling roundell they behind them sent. 
The rest of other fishes drawen were, 
Which with their finny oares the swelling sea did sheare. 

Soon as they been arrived upon the brim 

Of the Rich Strand, their charets they foriore ; 

And let their teamed fishes softly swim 

Along the margent of the foamy shore, 

Lest they their finnes should bruise, and surbeat sore 

Their tender feete upon the stony ground 

There are a couple of Dolphins like these, in Raphael's Galatea. 
Dante, with his tendency to see things in a dreary point of view, 
has given an illustration of the agonies of some of the damned 
in his Inferno, at once new, fine, and horrible. It is in the 22d 
book, " Come i deljini" &c. He says that some wretches, 
swimming in one of the gulfs of hell, shot out their backs occa- 
sionally, like Dolphins, above the pitchy liquid, in order to snatch 
a respite from torment ; but darted them back again like light- 
ning. The devils would prong them as they rose. Strange 
fancies these for maintaining the character of religion ! 

Hear Shakspeare, always the noble and the good-natured. 
We forget of what great character he is speaking ; but never 
was an image that more singularly yet completely united supe- 
riority and playfulness. 

His delights 
Were dolphin-like ; and showed Jhemselves above 
The element he lived in. 



chap xxvm.] RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 145 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Ronald of the Perfect Hand. 

[The following tale is founded on a Scottish tradition. It was intended to 
be written in verse; which will account for its present appearance.] 

The stern old shepherd of the air, 
The spirit of the whistling hair, 
The wind, has risen drearily 
In the Northern evening sea, 
And is piping long and loud 
To many a heavy upcoming cloud, 
Upcoming heavy in many a row, 
Like the unwieldy droves below 
Of seals and horses of the sea, 
That gather up as drearily, 
And watch with solemn- visaged eyes 
Those mightier movers in the skies. 

'Tis evening quick ; — 'tis night : — the rain 
Is sowing wide the fruitless main, 
Thick, thick ; — no sight remains the while 
From the farthest Orkney isle, 
No sight to sea-horse, or to seer, 
But of a little pallid sail, 
That seems as if 'twould struggle near, 
And then as if its pinion pale 
Gave up the battle to the gale. 
Four chiefs there are of special note, 
Laboring in that earnest boat ; 
Four Orkney chiefs, that yesterday 
Coming in their pride away 
From there smote Norwegian king, 
Led their war-boats triumphing 
Straight along the golden line 
Made by morning's eye divine. 
Stately came they, one by one, 
Every sail beneath the sun, 
As if he their admiral were 
11 



146 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxviii. 

Looking down from the lofty air, 

Stately, stately through the gold — 

But before that day was done, 

Lo, his eye grew vexed and cold ; 

And every boat, except that one, 

A tempest trampled in its roar ; 

And every man, except those four, 

Was drenched, and driving far from home, 

Dead and swift, through the Northern foam. 

Four are they, who wearily 
Have drank of toil two days at sea ; 
Duth Maruno, steady and dark, 
Cormar, Soul of the Winged Bark ; 
And bright Clan Alpin, who could leap 
Like a torrent from steep to steep ; 
And he, the greatest of that great band, 
Ronald of the Perfect Hand. 

Dumbly strain they for the shore, 
Foot to board, and grasp on oar. 
The billows, panting in the wind, 
Seem instinct with ghastly mind, 
And climb like crowding savages 
At the boat that dares their seas. 
Dumbly strain they through and through, 
Dumbly, and half blindly too, 
Drenched, and buffeted, and bending 
Up and down without an ending, 
Like ghostly things that could not cease 
To row among those savages. 

Ronald of the Perfect Hand 
Has rowed the most of all that band ; 
And now he's resting for a snace 
At the helm, and turns his face 
Round and round on every side 
To see what cannot be descried, 
Shore, nor sky, nor light, nor even 
Hope, whose feet are last in heaven. 
Ronald thought him of the roar 
Of the fight the day before, 
And of the young Norwegian prince 
Whom in all the wor ryings 
And hot vexations of the fray, 
He had sent with life away, 



chap, xxviii.] RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND 147 

Because he told him of a bride 

That if she lost him, would have died ; 

And Ronald then, in bitter case, 

Thought of his own sweet lady's face, 

Which upon this very night 

Should have blushed with bridal light, 

And of her downward eyelids meek, 

And of her voice, just heard to speak, 

As at the altar, hand in hand, 

On ceasing of the organ grand, 

'Twould have bound her for weal or wo, 

With delicious answers low : 

And more he thought of, grave and sweet, 

That made the thin tears start, and meet 

The wetting of the insolent wave ; 

And Ronald, who though all so brave, 

Had often that hard day before 

Wished himself well housed on shore, 

Felt a sharp impatient start 

Of home-sick wilfulness at heart, 

And steering with still firmer hand, 

As if the boat could feel command, 

Thrill' d with a fierce and forward motion, 

As though 'twould shoot it through the ocean. 

"Some spirit," exclaimed Duth Maruno, "must pursue us, 
and stubbornly urge the boat out of its way, or we must have 
arrived by this time at Inistore."* Ronald took him at his 
word, and turning hastily round, thought he saw an armed figure 
behind the stern. His anger rose with his despair ; and with all 
his strength he dashed his arm at the moveless and airy shape. 
At that instant a fierce blast of the wind half turned the boat 
round. The chieftains called out to Ronaldo to set his whole 
heart at the rudder ; but the wind beat back their voices, like 
young birds into the nest, and no answer followed it. The boat 
seemed less and less manageable, and at last to be totally left to 
themselves. In the intervals of the wind they again called out 
to Ronald, but still received no answer. One of them crept 
forward, and felt for him through the blinding wet and darkness. 
His place was void. " It was a ghost," said they, " which came 

* The old name for the Orkneys. 



148 THE INDICATOR [chap, xxviii. 

to fetch him to the spirits of his fathers. Ronalc of the Perfect 
Hand is gone, and we shall follow him as we did in the fight. 
Hark ! the wind is louder and louder : it is louder and many- 
voiced. Is it his voice which has roused up the others? Is he 
calling upon us, as he did in the battle, when his followers 
shouted after his call ?" 

It was the rocks of an isle beyond Inistore, which made that 
multitudinous roaring of the wind. The chieftains found that 
they were not destined to perish in the mid-ocean • but it was 
fortunate for them that the wind did not set in directly upon the 
island, or they would have been dashed to pieces upon the 
rocks. With great difficulty they stemmed their way obliquely ; 
and at length were thrown violently to shore, bruised, wounded, 
and half inanimate. They remained on this desolate island two 
days, during the first of which the storm subsided. On the 
third, they were taken away by a boat of seal-hunters. 

The chiefs, on their arrival at home, related how Ronald of 
the Perfect Hand had been summoned away by a loud-voiced 
spirit, and disappeared. Great was the mourning in Inistore for 
the Perfect Hand ; for the Hand that with equal skill could 
throw the javelin and traverse the harp ; could build the sudden 
hut of the hunter ; and bind up the glad locks of the maiden tired 
in the dance. Therefore was he called the Perfect Hand ; and 
therefore with great mourning was he mourned : yet with none 
half as great as by his love, his betrothed bride Moilena ; by 
her of the Beautiful Voice ; who had latterly begun to be called 
the Perfect Voice, because she was to be matched with him of the 
Perfect Hand. Perfect Hand and Perfect Voice were they 
called ; but the Hand was now gone, and the Voice sang brokenly 
for tears. 

A dreary winter was it though a victorious, to the people of 
Inistore. Their swords had conquered in Lochlin ; but most of 
the hands that wielded them had never come back. Their warm 
pressure was felt no more. The last which they had given 
their friends was now to serve them all their lives. " Never, 
with all my yearning," said Moilena, " shall I look upon his 
again, as I have looked upon it a hundred times, when nobody 



chap, xxviii.] RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 149 

suspected. Never." And she turned from the sight of the des- 
tructive ocean, which seemed as interminable as her thoughts. 

But winter had now passed away. The tears of the sky at 
least were dried up. The sun looked out kindly again ; and the 
spring had scarcely re-appeared, when Inistore had a proud and 
gladder day, from the arrival of the young prince of Lochlin 
with his bride. It was a bitter one to Moilena, for the prince 
came to thank Ronald for sparing his life in the war, and had 
brought his lady to thank him too. They thanked Moilena in- 
stead ; and, proud in the midst of her unhappiness, of being the 
representative of the Perfect Hand, she lavished hundreds of 
smiles upon them from her pale face. But she wept in secret. 
She could not bear this new addition to the store of noble and 
kind memories respecting her Ronald. He had spared the 
bridegroom for his bride. He had hoped to come back to his 
own. She looked over to the north ; and thought that her home 
was as much there as in Inistore. 

Meantime, Ronald was not drowned. A Scandinavian boat, 
bound for an island called the Island of the Circle, had picked 
him up. The crew, which consisted chiefly of priests, were 
going thither to propitiate the deities, on account of the late 
defeat of their countrymen. They recognized the victorious 
chieftain, who on coming to his senses freely confessed who he 
was. Instantly they raised a chorus, which rose sternly through 
the tempest. " We carry," said they, " an acceptable present 
to the gods. Odin, stay thy hand from the slaughter of the ob- 
scure. Thor, put down the mallet with which thou beatest, like 
red hail, on the skulls of thine enemies. Ye other feasters in 
Valhalla, set down the skulls full of mead, and pledge a health 
out of a new and noble one to the King of Gods and Men, that 
the twilight of heaven may come late. We bring an acceptable 
present: we bring Ronald of the Perfect Hand." Thus they 
sang in the boat, laboring all the while with the winds and the 
waves, but surer now than ever of reaching the shore. And 
they did so by the first light of the morning. When they came 
to the circle of sacred stones, from which the island look its 
name, they placed their late conqueror by the largest, and kin- 
dled a fire in the middle. The warm smoke rose thickly against 



150 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxviii. 



the cold white morning. Let me be offered up to your gods," 
said Ronald, " like a man, by the sword ; and not like food, by 
the fire." " We know all," answered the priests: "be thou silent." 
" Treat not him," said Ronald, " who spared your prince, unwor- 
thily. If he must be sacrificed, let him die as your prince would 
have died by this hand." Still they answered nothing but " We 
know all : be thou silent." Ronald could not help witnessing 
these preparations for a new and unexpected death with an emo- 
tion of terror ; but disdain and despair were uppermost. Once, 
and but once, his cheek turned deadly pale in thinking of Moile- 
na. He shifted his posture resolutely, and thought of the spirits 
of the dead whom he was about to join. The priests then encir- 
cled the fire and the stone at which he stood, with another devot- 
ing song ; and Ronald looked earnestly at the ruddy flames, 
which gave to his body, as in mockery, a kindly warmth. The 
priests, however, did not lay hands on him. They respected the 
sparer of their prince so far as not to touch him themselves ; 
they left him to be despatched by the supernatural beings, whom 
they confidently expected to come down for that purpose as soon 
as they had retired. 

Ronald, whose faith was of another description, saw their 
departure with joy ; but it was damped the next minute. What 
was he to do in winter-time on an island, inhabited only by the 
fowls and other creatures of the northern sea, and never touch- 
ed at but for a purpose hostile to his hopes ? For he now recol- 
lected, that this was the island he had so often heard of, as the 
chief seat of the Scandinavian religion ; whose traditions had 
so influenced countries of a different faith, that it was believed 
in Scotland as well as the continent, that no human being could 
live there many hours. Spirits, it was thought, appeared in ter- 
rible superhuman shapes, like the bloody idols which the priests 
worshipped, and carried the stranger off. 

The warrior of Inistore had soon too much reason to know the 
extent of this belief. He was not without fear himself, but dis- 
dained to yield to any circumstances without a struggle. He 
refreshed himself with some snow-water ; and after climbing 
the highest part of the island to look for a boat in vain (nothing 
was to be seen but the waves tumbling on all sides after the 



chap, xxvin.l RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 151 

storm), he set about preparing a habitation. He saw at a little 
distance, on a slope, the mouth of a rocky cave. This he des- 
tined for his shelter at night ; and looking round for a defence 
for the door, as he knew not whether bears might not be among 
the inhabitants, he cast his eyes among the thinnest of the stones 
which stood upright about the fire. The heart of the warrior, 
though of a different faith, misgave him as he thought of appro- 
priating this mystical stone, carved full of strange figures ; but 
half in courage, and half in the despair of fear, he suddenly 
twisted it from its place. No one appeared. The fire altered 
not. The noise of the fowl and other creatures was no louder 
on the shore. Ronald smiled at his fears, and knew the undi- 
minished vigor of the Perfect Hand. 

He found the cavern already fitted for shelter ; doubtless by 
the Scandinavian priests. He had bitter reason to know how 
well it sheltered him ; for day after day he hoped in vain that 
some boat from Inistore would venture upon the island. He be- 
held sails at a distance, but they never came. He piled stone 
upon stone, joined old pieces of boats together, and made flags 
of the sea-weed ; but all in vain. The vessels, he thought, 
came nearer, but none so near as to be of use ; and a new and 
sickly kind of impatience cut across the stout heart of Ronald, 
and set it beating. He knew not whether it was with the cold 
or with misery, but his frame would shake for an hour together, 
when he lay down on his dried weeds and feathers to rest. He 
remembered the happy sleeps that used to follow upon toil ; and 
he looked with double activity for the eggs and shell-fish on 
which he sustained himself, and smote double the number of 
seals, half in the very exercise of his anger: and then he would 
fall dead asleep with fatigue. 

In this way he bore up against the violences of the winter sea- 
son, which had now passed. The sun looked out with a melan- 
choly smile upon the moss and the poor grass, chequered here 
and there with flowers almost as poor. There was the butter- 
cup, struggling from a dirty white into a yellow ; and a faint- 
colored poppy, neither the good nor the ill of which was then 
known ; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrink- 
ing violet. The lark alone seemed cheerful, and startled the 



152 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxviii. 

ear of the desolate chieftain with its climbing triumph in the air. 
Ronald looked up. His fancy had been made wild and wilful 
by strange and sickened blood ; and he thought impatiently, 
that if he were up there like the lark, he might see his friends 
and his love in Inistore. 

Being naturally, however, of a gentle as well as courageous 
disposition, the Perfect Hand found the advantage as well as the 
necessity of turning his violent impulses into noble matter for 
patience. He had heard of the dreadful bodily sufferings which 
the Scandinavian heroes underwent from their enemies with tri- 
umphant songs. He knew that no such sufferings which were 
fugitive, could equal the agonies of a daily martyrdom of mind ; 
and he cultivated a certain humane pride of patience, in order 
to bear them. 

His only hope of being delivered from the island now depend- 
ed on the Scandinavian priests ; but it was a moot point whether 
they would respect him for surviving, or kill him on that very 
account, out of a mixture of personal and superstitious resent- 
ment. He thought his death the more likely ; but this, at least, 
was a termination to the dreary prospect of a solitude for life ; 
and partly out of that hope, and partly from a courageous pa- 
tience, he cultivated as many pleasant thoughts and objects 
about him as he could. He adorned his cavern with shells and 
feathers ; he made himself a cap and cloak of the latter, and 
boots and a vest of seal-skin, girding it about with the glossy 
sea-weed ; he cleared away a circle before the cavern, planted 
it with the best grass, and heaped about it the mossiest stories : 
he strung som ■; bones of a fish with sinews, and fitting a shell 
beneath it, the Perfect Hand drew forth the first gentle music 
that had been heard in that wild island. He touched it one day 
in the midst of a flock of seals, who were basking in the sun ; 
they turned their heads towards the sound ; he thought he saw 
in their mild faces a human expression ; and from that day forth 
no seal was ever slain oy the Perfect Hand. He spared even 
the huge and cloudy visaged-walrusses, in whose societies he 
beheld a dull resemblance to the gentler affections ; and his new 
intimacy with these possessors of the place was completed by 
one of the former animals, who having 033:1 rescued by him 



chap, xxviii.] RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 153 

from a contest with a larger one, followed him about, as well as 
its half-formed and dragging legs would allow, with the officious 
attachment of a dog. 

But the summer was gone, and no one had appeared. The 
new thoughts and deeper insight into things, which solitude and 
sorrowful necessity had produced, together with a diminution of 
his activity, had not tended to strengthen him against the ap- 
proach of winter : and autumn came upon him like the melan- 
choly twilight of the year. He had now no hope of seeing even 
the finishers of his existence before the spring. The rising winds 
among the rocks, and the noise of the whales blowing up their 
spouts of water, till the caverns thundered with their echoes, 
seemed to be like heralds of the stern season which was to close 
him in against approach. He had tried one day to move the 
stone at the mouth of his habitation a little further in, and found 
his strength fail him. He laid himself half reclining on the 
ground, full of such melancholy thoughts as half bewildered 
him. Things, by turns, appeared a fierce dream, and a fiercer 
reality. He was leaning and looking on the ground, and idly 
twisting his long hair, when his eyes fell upon the hand that held 
it. It was livid and emaciated. He opened and shut it, open- 
ed and shut it again, turned it round, and looked at its ribbed 
thinness and laid-open machinery ; many thoughts came upon 
him, some which he understood not, and some which he recog- 
nized but too well ; and a turbid violence seemed rising at his 
heart, when the seal, his companion, drew nigh, and began lick- 
ing that weak memorial of the Perfect Hand. A shower of self- 
pitying tears fell upon the seal's face and the hand together. 

On a sudden he heard a voice. It was a deep and loud one, 
and distinctly called out " Ronald I" He looked up, gasping 
with wonder. Three times it called out, as if with peremptory 
command, and three times the rocks and caverns echoed the 
word with a dim sullenness. 

Recollecting himself, he would have risen and answered ; but 
the sudden change of sensations had done what all his sufferings 
had not been able to do, and he found himself unable either to 
rise or to speak. The voice called again and again ; but it was 
now more distant, and Ronald's heart sickened as he heard it 



154 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxvni. 

retreating. His strength seemed to fail him in proportion as it 
became necessary. Suddenly the voice came back again. It 
advances. Other voices are heard, all advancing. In a short 
time, figures come hastily down the slope by the side of his ca- 
vern, looking over into the area before it as they descend. They 
entei. They are before him and about him. Some of them, in 
a Scandinavian habit, prostrate themselves at his feet, and ad- 
dress him in an unknown language. But these are sent away 
by another, who remains with none but two youths. Ronald has 
risen a little, and leans his back against the rock. One of the 
youths puts his arm between his neck and the rock, and half 
kneels beside him, turning his face away and weeping. " I am 
no god, nor a favorite of gods, as these people supposed me," 
said Ronald, looking up at the chief who was speaking to the 
other youth : " if thou wilt despatch me then, do so. I only pray 
thee to let the death be fit for a warrior, such as I once was." 
The chief appeared agitated. " Speak not ill of the gods, Ro- 
nald," said he, " although thou wert blindly brought up. A 
warrior like thee must be a favorite of heaven. I come to prove 
it to thee. Dost thou not know me ? I come to give thee life for 
life." Ronald looked more steadfastly. It was the Scandina- 
vian prince whom he had spared, because of his bride, in battle. 
He smiled, and lifted up his hand to him, which was intercept- 
ed and kissed by the youth who held his arm round his neck. 
" Who are these fair youths ?" said Ronald, half turning his 
head to look in his supporter's face. " This is the bride I spoke 
of," answered the prince, " who insisted on sharing this voyage 
with me, and puts on this dress to be the bolder in it." " And 
who is the other?" The other, with dried eyes, looked smiling 
into his, and intercepted the answer also. " Who," said the 
sweetest voice in the world, " can it be, but one ?" With a 
quick and almost fierce tone, Ronald cried out aloud, " I know 
the voice ;" and he would have fallen flat on the earth, if they 
had not all three supported him. 

It was a mild return to Inistore, Ronald gathering strength all 
the way, at the eyes and voice of Moilena, and the hands of all 
three. Their discovery of him was easily explained. The 
crews of the vessels, who had been afraid to come nearer, had 



chap, xxviii.] RONALD OF THE PERFECT HAND. 155 

repeatedly seen a figure on the island making signs. The 
Scandinavian priests related how they had left Ronald there ; 
but insisted that no human being could live upon it, and that 
some god wished to manifest himself to his faithful worshippers. 
The heart of Moilena was quick to guess the truth. The prince 
proposed to accompany the priests. His bride and the destined 
bride of his savior went with him, and returned as you heard ; 
and from that day forth many were the songs in Inistore, upon 
the fortunes of the Perfect Hand and the kindness of the Perfect 
Voice. Nor were those forgotten who foigot not others. 



156 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxk. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

A Chapter on Hats. 

We know not what will be thought of our taste in so important 
a matter, but we must confess we are not fond of a new hat. 
There is a certain insolence about it : it seems to value itself 
upon its finished appearance, and to presume upon our liking be- 
fore we are acquainted with it. In the first place, it comes home 
more like a marmot or some other living creature, than a manu- 
facture. It is boxed up, and wrapt in silver paper, and brought 
delicately. It is as sleek as a lap-dog. Then we are to take 
it out as nicely, and people are to wonder how we shall look in 
it. Maria twitches one this way, and Sophia that, and Caroline 
that, and Catharine t'other. We have the difficult task, all the 
while, of looking easy, till the approving votes are pronounced ; 
our only resource (which is also difficult) being to say good 
things to all four ; or to clap the hat upon each of their heads, 
and see what pretty milk-women they make. At last the ap- 
proving votes are pronounced ; and (provided it is fine) we may 
go forth. But how uneasy the sensation about the head ! 
How unlike the old hat, to which we had become used, and 
which must now make way for this fop of a stranger ! We 
might do what we liked with the former. Dust, rain, a gale of 
wind, a fall, a squeeze, — nothing affected it. It was a true 
friend, a friend for all weathers. Its appearance only was 
against it : in everything else it was the better for wear. But if 
the roads or the streets are too dry, the new hat is afraid of get- 
ting dusty : if there is wind, and it is not tight, it may be blown 
off into the dir ; : we may have to scramble after it through dust 
or mud ; just reaching it with our fingers, only to see it blown 
away again. And if rain comes on ! Oh ye gallant apprenti- 
ces, who have issued forth on a Sunday morning, with Jane or 



chap, xxix.] A CHAPTER ON HATS. * 157 

Susan, careless either of storms at night-fall, or toils and scold- 
ings next day ! Ye, who have received new hats and boots but 
an hour before ye set out ; and then issue forth triumphantly, 
the charmer by your side ! She, with arm in yours, and hand- 
kerchief in hand, blushing, or eating gingerbread, trips on : ye, 
admiring, trudge : we ask ye, whether love itself has prevented 
ye from feeling a certain fearful consciousness of that crowning 
glory, the new and glossy hat, when the first drops of rain an- 
nounce the coming of a shower ! Ah, hasten, while yet it is 
of use to haste ; ere yet the spotty horror fixes on the nap ! 
Out with the protecting handkerchief, which, tied round the hat, 
and flowing off in a corner behind, shall gleam through the 
thickening night like a suburb comet ! Trust not the tempting 
yawn of stable-yard or gate-way, or the impossible notion of a 
coach ! The rain will continue ; and, alas ! ye are not so rich 
as in the morning. Hasten ! or think of a new hat's becoming 
a rain-spout ! Think of its well-built crown, its graceful and 
well-measured fit, the curved-up elegance of its rim, its shadow- 
ing gentility when seen in front, its arching grace over the ear 
when beheld sideways ! Think of it also the next day ! How 
altered, how dejected ! 

How changed from him, 
That life of measure and that soul of rim ! 

Think of the paper-like change of its consistence ; of its limp 
sadness — its confused and flattened nap, and of that polished 
and perfect circle, which neither brush nor hot iron shall 
restore ! 

We have here spoken of the beauties of a new hat ; but 
abstractedly considered, they are very problematical. Fashion 
makes beauty for a time. Our ancestors found a grace in the 
cocked hats now confined to beadles, Chelsea pensioners, and 
coachmen. They would have laughed at our chimney-tops 
with a border : though upon the whole we do think them the 
more graceful of the two. The best modern covering for the 
head was the imitation of the broad Spanish hat in use about 
thirty years back, when Mr. Stothard made his designs for the 
Novelist's Magazine. But in proportion as society has been put 



158 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxix 

into a bustle, our hats seem to have narrowed their dimensions : 
their flaps were clipped off more and more till they became a 
rim ; and now the rim has contracted to a mere nothing ; so that 
what with our close heads and our tight succinct mode of dress, 
we look as if we were intended for nothing but to dart back- 
wards and forwards on matters of business, with as little hin- 
drance to each other as possible. 

This may give us a greater distaste to the hat than it 
deserves ; but good-looking or not, we know of no situation in 
which a new one can be said to be useful. We have seen how 
the case is during bad weather : but if the weather is in the 
finest condition possible, with neither rain nor dust, there may 
be a hot sunshine ; and then the hat is too narrow to shade us : 
no great evil, it is true ; but we must have our pique out against 
the knave, and turn him to the only account in our power : — we 
must write upon him. For every other purpose, we hold him as 
naught. The only place a new hat can be carried into with 
safety, is a church ; for there is plenty of room there. There 
also takes place its only union of the ornamental with the use- 
ful, if so it is to be called: we allude to the preparatory ejacula- 
tion whispered into it by the genteel worshipper, before he 
turns round and makes a bow to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and the 
Miss Thompsons. There is a formula for this occasion ; and 
doubtless it is often used, to say nothing of extempore effusions : 
but there are wicked imaginations, who suspect that instead of 
devouter whisperings, the communer with his lining sometimes 
ejaculates no more than Swallow, St. James's-street; or, Augarde 
and Spain, Hatters, No. 51, Oxford-street, London : — after which 
he draws up his head with infinite gravity and preparation, and 
makes the gentle recognitions aforesaid. 

But wherever there is a crowd, the new hat is worse than 
useless. It is a pity that the general retrenchment of people's 
finances did away with the flat opera hat, which was a very 
sensible thing. The round one is only in the way. The matting 
over the floor of the Opera does not hinder it from getting dusty ; 
not to mention its chance of a kick from the inconsiderate. But 
from the pit of the other theatres, you may bring it away 
covered with sawdust, or rubbed up all the wrong way of the 



SI] 

ni 



chap, xxix.] A CHAPTER ON HATS. 159 

nap, or monstrously squeezed into a shapeless lump. The least 
thing to be expected in a pressure, is a great poke in its side 
like a sunken cheek. 

Boating is a mortal enemy to new hats. A shower has you 
fast in a common boat ; or a sail-line, or an inexperienced oar, 
may knock the hat off: and then fancy it tilting over the water 
with the tide, soaked all the while beyond redemption, and 
escaping from the tips of your outstretched fingers, while you 
ought all to be pulling the contrary way home. 

But of all wrong boxes for a new hat, avoid a mail-coach. If 
you keep it on, you will begin nodding perhaps at midnight, and 
then it goes jamming against the side of the coach, to the equal 
misery of its nap and your own. If you take it off, where is its 
refuge ? Will the clergyman take the least heed of it, who is 
snoring comfortably in one corner in his night-cap ? Or will 
ihe farmer, jolting about inexorably ? Or the regular traveller, 

ho, in his fur-cap and infinite knowledge of highway conve- 
niences, has already beheld it with contempt ? Or the old 
market-woman, whom it is in vain to request to be tender ? Or 
the young damsel, who wonders how you can think of sleeping 
in such a thing ? In the morning you suddenly miss your hat, 
and ask after it with trepidation. The traveller smiles. They 
all move their legs, but know nothing of it ; till the market- 
woman exclaims, " Deary me ! Well — lord, only think ! A 
hat is it, sir ? Why I do believe, — but I 'm sure I never thought 
o' such a thing more than the child unborn, — that it must be a 
hat then which I took for a pan I 5 ve been a buying ; and so 
I 've had my warm foot in it, Lord help us, ever since five 
o'clock this blessed morning !" 

It is but fair to add, that we happen to have an educated 
antipathy to the hat. At our school no hats were worn, and the 
cap is too small to be a substitute. Its only use is to astonish 
the old ladies in the street, who wonder how so small a thing 
can be kept on ; and to this end we used to rub it into the back 
or side of the head, where it hung like a worsted wonder. It is 
after the fashion of Catharine's cap in the play : it seems as if 

Moulded on a porringer ; 
« Why, 'tis a cockle, or a walnut-shell, 



160 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxix. 

A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap ; 
A custard coffin, a bauble. 

But we may not add 

I love thee well, in that thou likest it not 

111 befall us, if we ever dislike anything about thee, old nurse 
of our childhood ! How independent of the weather used we to 
feel in our old friar's dress,- — our thick shoes, yellow worsted 
stockings, and coarse long coat or gown ! Our cap was oftener 
in our hand than on our head, let the weather be what it would. 
We felt a pride as well as pleasure, when everybody else was 
hurrying through the streets, in receiving the full summer 
showers with uncovered poll, sleeking our glad hair like the 
feathers of a bird. 

It must be said for hats in general, that they are a very J 
ancient part of dress, perhaps the most ancient ; for a negro, 
who has nothing else upon him, sometimes finds it necessary to 
- guard off the sun with a hat of leaves or straw. The Chinese, 
who carry their records farther back than any other people, are 
a hatted race, both narrow-brimmed and broad. We are apt to 
think of the Greeks as a bare-headed people ; and they liked to 
be so ; but they had hats for journeying in, such as may be seen 
on the statues of Mercury, who was the god of travellers. They 
were large and flapped, and were sometimes fastened round un- 
der the chin like a lady's bonnet. The Eastern nations gene- 
rally wore turbans, and do still, with the exception of the Per- 
sians, who have exchanged them for large conical caps of felt. 
The Romans copied the Greeks in their dress, as in everything 
else; but the poorer orders wore a cap like their boasted 
Phrygian ancestors, resembling the one which the reader may 
see about the streets upon the bust of Canova's Paris. The 
others would put their robes about their heads, upon occasion, — 
after the fashion of the hoods of the middle ages, and of the cloth 
head-dresses which we see in the portraits of Dante and Pe- 
trarch. Of a similar mode are the draperies on the heads of 
our old Plantagenet kings and of Chaucer. The velvet cap 
which succeeded, appears to have come from Italv, as seen in 



chap, xxix.] A CHAPTER ON HATS. 101 

the portraits of Raphael and Titian ; and it would probably have 
continued till the French times of Charles the Second, for our 
ancestors, up to that period, were great admirers of Italy, had 
not Philip the Second of Spain come over to marry our Queen 
Mary. The extreme heats of Spain had forced the natives upon 
taking to that ingenious compound of the hat and umbrella, still 
known by the name of the Spanish hat. We know not whether 
Philip himself wore it. His father, Charles the Fifth, who was 
at the top of the world, is represented as delighting in a little 
humble-looking cap. But we conceive it was either from Philip, 
or some gentleman in his train, that the hat and feather suc- 
ceeded among us to the cap and jewels of Henry the Eighth. 
The ascendency of Spain in those times carried it into other 
parts of Europe. The French, not requiring so much shade 
from the sun, and always playing with and altering their dress, 
as a child does his toy, first covered the brim with feathers, then 
gave them a pinch in front ; then came pinches up at the side ; 
and at last appeared the fierce and triple-daring cocked hat. 
This disappeared in our childhood, or only survived among the 
military, the old, and the reverend, who could not willingly 
part with their habitual dignity. An old beau or so would also 
retain it, in memory of its victories when young. We remem- 
ber its going away from the heads of the foot-guards. The 
heavy dragoons retained it till lately. It is now almost sunk 
into the mock-heroic, and confined, as we before observed, to 
beadles and coachmen, &c. The modern clerical beaver, 
agreeably to the deliberation with which our establishments 
depart from all custom, is a cocked hat with the front flap let 
down, and only a slight pinch remaining behind. This is worn 
also by the judges, the lawyers being of clerical extraction. 
Still, however, the true cocked hat lingers here and there with a 
solitary old gentleman ; and wherever it appears in such com- 
pany, begets a certain retrospective reverence. There was a 
something in its connexion with the high-bred drawing-room 
times of the seventeenth century ; in the gallant though quaint 
ardor of its look ; and in its being lifted up in salutations with 
that deliberate loftiness, the arm arching up in front and the 
hand slowly raising it by the front angle with finger and thumb 
12 



162 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxix. 

— that could not easily die. We remember, when our steward 
at school, remarkable for his inflexible air of precision and dig- 
nity, left off his cocked hat for a round one; there was, undoubt- 
edly, though we dared only half confess it to our minds, a sort 
of diminished majesty about him. His infinite self-possession 
began to look remotely finite. His Crown Imperial was a little 
blighted. It was like divesting a column of its capital. But 
the native stateliness was there, informing the new hat. He 

Had not yet lost 
All his original beaver : nor appeared 
Less than arch-steward ruined, and the excess 
Of glory obscured. 

The late Emperor Paul had conceived such a sense of the 
dignity of the cocked hat, aggravated by its having been deposed 
by the round one of the French republicans, that he ordered all 
persons in his dominions never to dare be seen in public with 
round hats, upon pain of being knouted and sent to Siberia. 

Hats being the easiest part of the European dress to be taken 
off, are doffed among us out of reverence. The Orientals, on 
the same account, put off their slippers instead of turbans, 
which is the reason why the Jews still keep their heads covered 
during worship. The Spanish grandees have the privilege of 
wearing their hats in the royal presence, probably in comme- 
moration of the free spirit in which the Cortes used to crown 
the sovereign ; telling him (we suppose in their corporate capa- 
city) that they were better men than he, but chose him of their 
own free will for their master. The grandees only claim to be 
as good men, unless their families are older. There is a well- 
known story of a picture, in which the Vi] gin Mary is repre- 
sented with a label coming out of her mouth, saying to a Span- 
ish gentleman who has politely taken off his hat, " Cousin, be 
covered." But the most interesting anecdote connected with a 
hat belongs to the family of the De Courcys, Lord Kinsale. One 
of their ancestors, at an old period of our history, having over- 
thrown a huge and insolent champion, who had challenged the 
whole court, was desired by the king to ask him some favor. He 
requested that his descendants should have the privilege of keep- 



chap, xxix.] A CHAPTER ON HATS. 163 

ing their heads covered in the royal presence, and they do so to 
this day. The new lord, we believe, always comes to court on 
purpose to vindicate his right. We have heard, that on the last 
occasion, probably after a long interval, some of the courtiers 
thought it might as well have been dispensed with : which was 
a foolish as well as a jealous thing, for these exceptions only 
prove the royal rule. The Spanish grandees originally took 
their privilege instead of receiving it ; but, when the spirit of it 
had gone, their covered heads were only so many intense recog- 
nitions of the king's dignity, which it was thought such a mighty 
thing to resemble. A Quaker's hat is a more formidable thing 
than a grandee's. 



164 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxx 



CHAPTER XXX. 

Seamen on Shore. 

The sole business of a seaman on shore, who has to go to sea 
again, is to take as much pleasure as he can. The moment he 
sets his foot on dry ground, he turns his back on all salt beef 
and other salt-water restrictions. His long absence, and the 
impossibility of getting land pleasures at sea, put him upon a 
sort of desperate appetite. He lands, like a conqueror taking 
possession. He has been debarred so long, that he is resolved 
to have that matter out with the inhabitants. They must render 
an account to him of their treasures, their women, their victual- 
ling-stores, their entertainments, their everything ; and in return 
he will behave like a gentleman, and scatter his gold. 

His first sensation at landing, is the strange firmness of the 
earth, which he goes treading in a sort of heavy light way, half 
wagoner and half dancing-master, his shoulders rolling, and his 
feet touching and going ; the same way, in short, in which he 
keeps himself prepared for all the chances of the vessel, when 
on deck. There is always this appearance of lightness of foot 
and heavy strength of upper works, in a sailor. And he feels it 
himself. He lets his jacket fly open, and his shoulder slouch, 
and his hair grow long, to be gathered into a heavy pig-tail ; but 
when full dressed, he prides himself on a certain gentility of toe, 
on a white stocking and a natty shoe, issuing lightly out of the 
flowing blue trowser. His arms are neutral, hanging and 
swinging in a curve* aloof; his hands half open, as if tbey had 
just been handling ropes, and had no object in life but to handle 
them again* He is proud of appearing in a new hat and slops, 
with a Belcher handkerchief flowing loosely round his neck, and 
the corner of another out of his pocket. Thus equipped, with 
pinchbeck buckles ir. his shoes (which he bought for gold), he 
puts some tobacco in his mouth, not as if he were going to use it 



chap, xxx.] SJJAMEN ON SHORE. 165 

directly, but as if he stuffed it in a pouch on one side, as a peli- 
can does fish, to employ it hereafter ; and so, with Bet Monson 
at his side, and perhaps a cane or whanghee twisted under his 
oth^T arm, sallies forth to take possession of the Lubber- 
land. He buys everything that he comes athw^jjt— nuts, gin- 
gerbread, apples, shoe-strings, beer, brandy, gin, buckles, knives, 
a watch (two, if he has money enough), gowns and handker- 
chiefs for Bet and his mother and sisters, dozens of " Superfine 
Best Men's Cotton Stockings," dozens of " Superfine Best Wo- 
men's Cotton Ditto," best good Check for Shirts (though he has 
too much already), infinite needles and thread (to sew his trow- 
sers with some day), a footman's laced hat, Bear's Grease, to 
make his hair grow (by way of joke), several sticks, all sorts of 
Jew articles, a flute (which he can't play, and never intends), a 
leg of mutton, which he carries somewhere to roast, and for a 
piece of which the landlord of the Ship makes him pay twice 
what he gave for the whole ; in short, all that money can be 
spent upon, which is everything but medicine gratis, and this he 
would insist on paying for. He would buy all the painted par- 
rots on an Italian's head, on purpose to break them, rather than 
not spend his money. He has fiddles and a dance at the Ship, 
with oceans of flip and grog ; and gives the blind fiddler tobacco 
for sweetmeats, and half-a-crown for treading on his toe. He 
asks the landlady, with a sigh, after her daughter Nanse, who 
first fired his heart with her silk stockings ; and finding that she is 
married and in trouble, leaves five crowns for her, which the old 
lady appropriates as part payment for a shilling in advance. He 
goes to the Port playhouse with Bet Monson, and a great red 
handkerchief full of apples, gingerbread nuts, and fresh beef; 
calls out for the fiddlers and Rule Britannia; pelts Tom Sikes 
in the pit ; and compares Othello to the black ship's cook in his 
white nightcap. When he comes to London, he and some mess- 
mates take a hackney-coach, full of Bet Monsons and tobacco- 
pipes, and go through the streets smoking and lolling out of 
window. He has ever been cautious of venturing on horseback, 
and among his other sights in foreign parts, relates with unfeign- 
ed astonishment how he has seen the Turks ride : " Only," says 
he, guarding against the hearer's incredulity, " they have sad- 



166 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxx. 

die-boxes to hold 'en in, fore and aft, and shovels like for stir- 
rups." He will teli you how the Chinese drink, and the Negurs 
dance, and the monkeys pelt you with cocoa-nuts; and how 
King Domy would have built him a mud hut and made him a 
peer of the realm, if he would have stopped with him, and taught 
him to make trowsers. He has a sister at a " School for Young 
Ladies," who blushes with a mixture of pleasure and shame at 
his appearance ; and whose confusion he completes by slipping 
fourpence into her hand, and saying out loud that he has " no 
more copper " about him. His mother and elder sisters at home 
doat on all he says and does ; telling him, however, that he is a 
great sea fellow, and was always wild ever since he was a hop- 
o'-my-thumb, no higher than the window locker. He tells his 
mother that she would be a duchess in Paranaboo ; at which the 
good old portly dame laughs and looks proud. When his. sisters 
complain of his romping, he says that they are only sorry it is 
not the baker. He frightens them with a mask made after the 
New Zealand fashion, and is forgiven for his learning. Their 
mantel-piece is filled by him with shells and shark's teeth ; and 
when he goes to sea again, there is no end of tears, and " God 
bless you's !" and home-made gingerbread. 

His Officer on shore does much of all this, only, generally 
speaking, in a higher taste. The moment he lands, he buys 
quantities of jewellery and other valuables, for all the females 
of his acquaintance ; and is taken in for every article. He 
sends in a cart-load of fresh meat to the ship, though he is going 
to town next day ; and calling in at a chandler's for some can- 
dles, is persuaded to buy a dozen of green wax, with which he 
lights up the ship at evening ; regretting that the fine moonlight 
hinders the effect of the color. A man, with a bundle beneath 
his arm, accosts him in an under tone ; and, with a look in 
which respect for his knowledge is mixed with an avowed zeal 
for his own interest, asks if his Honor will just step under the 
gangway here, and inspect some real India shawls. The gallant 
Lieutenant says to himself, " This fellow knows what's what, 
by his face ;" and so he proves it, by being taken in on the 
spot. When he brings the shawls home, he says to his sister 
with an air of triumph, " There, Poll, there's something for you ; 



chap, xxx.] SEAMEN ON SHORE. 167 

only cost me twelve, and is worth twenty if it 's worth a dollar." 
She turns pale — " Twenty what, my dear George ? Why, you 
haven't given twelve dollars for it, I hope i" " Not I, by the 
Lord." " That's lucky • because you see, my dear George, 
that all together is not worth more than fourteen or fifteen shil- 
lings." " Fourteen or fifteen what ! Why it's real India, en't 
it ? Why the fellow told me so ; or I'm sure I'd as soon " — 
(here he tries to hide his blushes with a bluster) — I'd as soon 
have given him twelve douses on the chaps as twelve guineas." 
"Twelve guineas!" exclaims the sister; and then drawling 
forth, " Why — my — dear — George," is proceeding to show him 
what the articles would have cost at Condell's when he inter- 
rupts her by requesting her to go and choose for herself a tea- 
table service. He then makes his escape to some messmates at 
a coffee-house, and drowns his recollection of the shawls in the 
best wine, and a discussion on the comparative merits of the 
English and West-Indian beauties and tables. At the theatre 
afterwards, where he has never been before, he takes a lady at 
the back of one of the boxes for a woman of quality ; and when 
after returning his long respectful gaze with a smile, she turns 
aside and puts her handkerchief to her mouth, he thinks it is in 
derision, till his friend undeceives him. He is introduced to the 
lady ; and ever afterwards, at first sight of a woman of quality 
(without any disparagement either to those charming person- 
ages), expects her to give him a smile. He thinks the other 
ladies much better creatures than they are taken for ; and for 
their parts, they tell him, that if all men were like himself, they 
would trust the sex again : — which, for aught we know, is the 
truth. He has, indeed, what he thinks a very liberal opinion of 
ladies in general : judging them all, in a manner, with the eye of 
a seaman's experience. Yet he will believe nevertheless in the 
" true-love " of any given damsel whom he seeks in the way of 
marriage, let him roam as much, or remain as long at a distance, 
as he may. It is not that he wants feeling ; but that he has read 
of it, time out of mind, in songs ; and he looks upon constancy as a 
sort of exploit, ansvering to those which he performs at sea. He 
is nice in his watches and linen. He makes you presents of 
cornelians, antique seals, cocoa-nuts set in silver, and other valu- 



168 THE INDICATOR [chap, xxx 



ables. When he shakes hands with you, it is like being caught 
in a windlass. He would not swagger about the streets in his 
uniform, for the world. He is generally modest in company, 
though liable to be irritated by what he thinks ungentlemanly 
behavior. He is also liable to be rendered irritable by sick- 
ness ; partly because he has been used to command others, and 
to be served with all possible deference and alacrity ; and partly, 
because the idea of suffering pain, without any honor or profit to 
get by it, is unprofessional, and he is not accustomed to it. He 
treats talents unlike his own with great respect. He often per- 
ceives his own so little felt, that it teaches him this feeling for 
that of others. Besides, he admires the quantity of information 
which people can get, without travelling like himself • especially 
when he sees how interesting his own becomes, to them as well 
as to everybody else. When he tells a story, particularly if full 
of wonders, he takes care to maintain his character for truth 
and simplicity, by qualifying it with all possible reservations, 
concessions, and anticipations of objection ; such as " in case, 
at such times as, so to speak, as it were, at least, at any rate." 
He seldom uses sea-terms but when jocosely provoked by some- 
thing contrary to his habits of life ; as for instance, if he is 
always meeting you on horseback, he asks if you never mean 
to walk the deck again ; or if he finds you studying day after 
day, he says you are always overhauling your log-book. He 
makes more new acquaintances, and forgets his old ones less, 
than any other man in the busy world ; for he is so compelled 
to make his home everywhere, remembers his native one as 
such a place of enjoyment, has all his friendly recollections so 
fixed upon his mind at sea, and has so much to tell and to hear 
when he returns, that change and separation lose with him the 
most heartless part of their nature. He alsc seessuca a variety 
of customs and manners, that he becomes charitable in his opi- 
nions altogether ; and charity, while it diffuses the affections, 
cannot let the old ones go. Half the secret of human inter- 
course is to make allowance for each other. 

When the Officer is superannuated or retires, he becomes, if 
intelligent and inquiring, one of the most agreeable old men in 
the world, equally welcome to the silent for his card-playing 



chap, xxx.] SEAMEN ON SHORE. 169 

and to the conversational for his recollections. He is fond of 
astronomy and books of voyages, and is immortal with all who 
know him for having been round the world, or seen the transit 
of Venus, or had one of his fingers carried off by a New Zea- 
land hatchet, or a present of feathers from an Otaheitan beauty, 

not elevated by his acquirements above some of his humbler 
tastes, he delights in a corner-cupboard holding his cocoa-nuts 
and punch-bowl ; has his summer-house castellated and planted 
with wooden cannon ; and sets up the figure of his old ship, the 
Britannia or the Lovely Nancy, for a statue in the garden : 
where it stares eternally with red cheeks and round black eyes, 
as if in astonishment at its situation. 

Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Tales about four hundred 
and thirty years ago, has among his other characters in that 
work a Shipman, who is exactly of the same cast as the modern 
sailor, — the same robustness, courage, and rough-drawn virtue, 
doing its duty, without being very nice in helping itself to its 
recreations. There is the very dirk, the complexion, the jollity, 
the experience, and the bad horsemanship. The plain unaffect- 
ed ending of the description has the air of a sailor's own speech ; 
while the line about the beard is exceedingly picturesque, poeti- 
cal, and comprehensive. In copying it out, we shall merely 
alter the old spelling, where the words are still modern. 

A shipman was there, wormed far by west; 
For aught I wot, he was of Dartemouth. 
He rode opon a rouncie, as he couth*, 
All in a gown of falding to the knee. 
A dagger hanging by a lace had he, 
About his neck, under his arm adown : 
The hot summer had made his hew all brown : 
And certainly he was a good felaw. 
Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw 
From Bourdeaux ward, while that the chapman slep 
Of nice conscience took he no keep. 
If that he fought and had the higher hand, 
By water he sent 'em home to every land. 
But of his craft, to reckon well his tides, 
His streames and his strandes him besides, 

* He rode upon a hack-horse, as well a3 he could. 



170 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxx, 

His harborough, his moon, and his lode manage, 
There was not such from Hull unto Carthage. 
Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake ; 
With many a tempest had his beard been shake. 
He knew well all the havens, as they were, 
From Gothland to the Cape de Finisterre, 
And every creek in Briton and in Spain. 
His barge ycleped was the Magdelain. 

When about to tell his Tale, he tells his fellow-travellers that 
he shall clink them so merry a bell, 

That it shall waken all this company : 
But it shall not be of philosophy, 
Nor of physick, nor of terms quaint of law ; 
There is but little Latin in my maw. 

The story he tells is a well-known one in the Italian novels, 
of a monk who made love to a merchant's wife, and borrowed 
a hundred francs of the husband to give her. She accordingly 
admits his addresses during the absence of her good man on a 
journey. When the latter returns, he applies to the cunning 
monk for repayment, and is referred to the lady ; who thus finds 
her mercenary behavior outwitted. 



chap, xxxi.] ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 171 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

On the Realities of Imagination. 

There is not a more unthinking way of talking, than to say 
such and such ^ains and pleasures are only imaginary, and 
therefore to be got rid of or undervalued accordingly. There 
is nothing imaginary, in the common acceptation of the word. 
The logic of Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield is good argument 
here: — "Whatever is, is." Whatever touches us, whatever 
moves us, does touch and does move us. We recognize the 
reality of it, as we do that of a hand in the dark. We might as 
well say that a sight which makes us laugh, or a blow which 
brings tears into our eyes, is imaginary, as that anything else 
is imaginary which makes us laugh or weep. We can only 
judge of things by their effects. Our perception constantly 
deceives us, in things with which we suppose ourselves perfectly 
conversant ; but our reception of their effect is a different mat- 
ter. Whether we are materialists or immaterialists, whether 
things be about us or within us, whether we think the sun is a 
substance, or only the image of a divine thought, an idea, a 
thing imaginary, we are equally agreed as to the notion of its 
warmth. But on the other hand, as this warmth is felt differ- 
ently by different temperaments, so what we call imaginary 
things affect different minds. What we have to do is not to 
deny their effect, because we do not feel in the same proportion, 
or whether we even feel it at all ; but to see whether our neigh- 
bors may not be moved. If they are, there is, to all intents 
and purposes, a moving cause. But we do not see it ? No ; — 
neither perhaps do they. They only feel it; they are only 
sentient, — a word which implies the sight given to the imagina- 
tion by the feelings. But what do you mean, we may ask in 
return, by seeing ? Some rays of light come in contact with the 



172 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxi 

eye ; they bring a sensation to it ; in a word, they touch it ; 
and the impression left by this touch we call sight. How far 
does this differ in effect from the impression left by any other 
touch, however mysterious ? An ox knocked down by a butcher, 
and a man knocked down by a fit of apoplexy, equally feel them- 
selves compelled to drop. The tickling of a straw and of a 
comedy, equally move the muscles about the mouth. The look 
of a beloved eye will so thrill the frame, that old philosophers 
have had recourse to a doctrine of beams and radiant particles 
flying from one sight to another. In fine, what is contact itself, 
and why does it affect us ? There is no one cause more myste- 
rious than another, if we look into it. 

Nor does the question concern us like moral causes. We 
may be content to know the earth by its fruits ; but how to in- 
crease and improve them is a more attractive study. If instead 
of saying that the causes which moved in us this or that pain or 
pleasure were imaginary, people were to say that the causes 
themselves were removeable, they would be nearer the truth. 
When a stone trips us up, we do not fall to disputing its exist- 
ence : we put it out of the way. In like manner, when we 
suffer from what is called an imaginary pain, our business is not 
to canvass the reality of it. Whether there is any cause or not 
in that or any other perception, or whether everything consist 
not in what is called effect, it is sufficient for us that the effect is 
real. Our sole business is to remove those second causes, which 
always accompany the original idea. As in deliriums, for in- 
stance, it would be idle to go about persuading the patient that 
he did not behold the figures he says he does. He might reason- 
ably ask us, if he could, how we know anything about the mat- 
ter ; or how we can be sure, that in the infinite wonders of the 
universe, certain realities may not become apparent to certain 
eyes, whether diseased or not. Our business would be to put 
him into that state of health, in which human beings are not 
diverted from their offices and comforts by a liability to such 
imaginations. The best reply to his question would be, that 
such a morbidity is clearly no more a fit state for a human being, 
than a disarranged or incomplete state of works is for a watch \ 
and that seeing the general tendency of nature to this complete- 



chap, xxxi.] ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 173 

ness or state of comfort, we naturally conclude, that the imagi- 
nations in question, whether substantial or not, are at least not 
of the same lasting or prevailing description. 

We do not profess metaphysics. We are indeed so little 
conversant with the masters of that art, that we are never sure 
whether we are using even its proper terms. All that we may 
know on the subject comes to us from some reflection and some 
experience ; and this all may be so little as to make a metaphy- 
sician smile ; which, if he be a true one, he will do good-na- 
turedly. The pretender will take occasion, from our very con- 
fession, to say that we know nothing. Our faculty, such as it 
is, is rather instinctive than reasoning ; rather physical than 
metaphysical ; rather sentient because it loves much, than be- 
cause it knows much ; rather calculated by a certain retention 
of boyhood, and by its wanderings in the green places of thought, 
to light upon a piece of the old golden world, than to tire our- 
selves, and conclude it unattainable, by too wide and scientific 
a search. We pretend to see farther than none but the worldly 
and the malignant. And yet those who see farther, may not all 
see so well. We do not blind our eyes with looking upon the 
sun in the heavens. We believe it to be there, but we find its 
light upon earth also; and we would lead humanity, if we could, 
out of misery and coldness into the shine of it. Pain might still 
be there ; must be so, as long as we are mortal ; 

For oft we still must weep, since we are human : 

but it should be pain for the sake of others, which is noble ; not 
unnecessary pain inflicted by or upon them, which it is absurd 
not to remove. The very pains of mankind struggle towards 
pleasures ; and such pains as are proper for them have this 
inevitable accompaniment of true humanity, — that they cannot 
but realize a certain gentleness of enjoyment. Thus the true 
bearer of pain would come round to us ; and he would not 
grudge us a share of his burden, though in taking from his 
trouble it might diminish his pride. Pride is but a bad pleasure 
at the expense of others. The great object of humanity is to 
enrich everybody. If it is a task destined not to succeed, it is 



174 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxi 

a good one from its very nature ; and fulfils at least a glad 
destiny of its own. To look upon it austerely is in reality the 
reverse of austerity. It is only such an impatience of the want 
of pleasure as leads us to grudge it in others ; and this impa- 
tience itself, if the sufferer knew how to use it, is but another 
impulse, in the general yearning, towards an equal wealth of 
enjoyment. 

But we shall be getting into other discussions. — The ground- 
work of all happiness is health. Take care of this ground ; 
and the doleful imaginations that come to warn us against its 
abuse, will avoid it. Take care of this ground, and let as many 
glad imaginations throng to it as possible. Read the magical 
works of the poets, and they will come. If you doubt their 
existence, ask yourself whether you feel pleasure at the idea of 
them ; whether you are moved into delicious smiles, or tears as 
delicious. If you are, the result is the same to you, whether 
they exist or not. It is not mere words to say, that he who goes 
through a rich man's park, and sees things in it which never 
bless the mental eyesight of the possessor, is richer than he. 
He is richer. More results of pleasure come home to him. 
The ground is actually more fertile to him : the place haunted 
with finer shapes. He has more servants to come at his call, 
I and administer to him with full hands. Knowledge, sympathy, 
imagination, are all divining-rods, with which he discovers 
treasure. Let a painter go through the grounds, and he will 
see not only the general colors of green and brown, but their 
combinations and contrasts, and the modes in which they might 
again be combined and contrasted. He will also put figures in 
the landscape if there are none there, flocks and herds, or a 
solitary spectator, or Venus lying with her white body among 
the violets and primroses. Let a musician go through, and he 
will hear " differences discreet " in the notes of the birds and 
the lapsing of the water-fall. He will fancy a serenade of wind 
instruments in the open air at a lady's window, with a voice 
rising through it ; or the horn of the hunter ; or the musical 
cry of the hounds, 

Matched in mouth like bells, 
Each under each ; 



chap, xxxi.] ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 175 

or a solitary voice in a bower, singing for an expected lover ; or 
the chapel organ, waking up like the fountain of the winds. 
Let a poet go through the grounds, and he will heighten and 
increase all these sounds and images. He will bring the colors 
from heaven, and put an unearthly meaning into the voice. 
He will have stories of the sylvan inhabitants ; will shift the 
population through infinite varieties ; will put a sentiment upon 
every sight and sound ; will be human, romantic, supernatural ; 
will make all nature send tribute into that spot. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures 
While the landskip round it measures ; 
Russet lawns, and fallows grey, 
Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 
Mountains, on whose barren breast 
The laboring clouds do often rest ; 
Meadows trim with daisies pied, 
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. 
Towers and battlements it sees, 
Bosomed high in tufted trees, 
Where perhaps some Beauty lies, 
The Cynosure of neighboring eyes. 

But not to go on quoting lines which are ever in people's 
mouths like a popular tune, take a passage from the same poet 
less familiar to one's every-day recollections. It is in his Ar- 
cadian Masque, which was performed by some of the Derby 
family at their seat at Harefield, near Uxbridge. The Genius 
of the place, meeting the noble shepherds and shepherdesses, 
accosts them : — 

Stay, gentle swains, for though in this disguise, 

I see bright honor sparkle through your eyes ; 

Of famous Arcady ye are, and sprung 

Of that renowned flood, so often sung, 

Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice 

Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse ; 

And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, 

Fair silver-buskin'd Nymphs, as great and good; 

I know this quest of yours, and free intent, 

Was all in honor and devotion meant 

To the great mistress of yon princely shrine, 



176 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxi 

Whom with low reverence I adore as mine ; 
And with all helpful service will comply- 
To further this night's glad solemnity ; 
And lead ye where ye may more near behold 
What shallow-searching Fame hath left untold ; 
Which I, full oft, amidst these shades alone, 
Have sat to wonder at, and gaze upon : 
For know, by lot from Jove I am the Power 
Of this fair wood, and live in oaken bower, 
To nurse the saplings tall, and curl the grove 
In ringlets quaint and wanton windings wove : 
And all my plants I save from nightly ill 
Of noisome winds, and blasting vapors chill ; 
And from the boughs brush off the evil dew, 
And heal the arms of thwarting thunder blue, 
Or what the cross dire-looking planet smites, 
Or hurtful worm with canker' d venom bites. 
When evening grey doth rise, I fetch my round 
Over the mount, and all this hallow' d ground ; 
And early, ere the odorous breath of morn 
Awakes the slumbering leaves, or tassel'd horn 
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about, 
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout 
With puissant words and murmurs made to bless. 
But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness 
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I 
To the celestial Syrens' harmony, 
That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, 
And sing to those that hold the vital shears, 
And turn the adamantine spindle round, 
On which the fate of gods and men is wound. 
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, 
To lull the daughters of Necessity, 
And keep unsteady Nature to her law, 
And the low world in measured motion draw, 
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear 
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear. 

" Milton's Genius of the Grove," says Warton, " being a spirit 
sent from Jove, and commissioned from heaven to exercise a 
preternatural guardianship over the ' saplings tall, 5 to avert 
every noxious influence, and < to visit every sprout with puissant 
words, and murmurs made to bless/ had the privilege, not in- 
dulged to gross mortals, of hearing the celestial syrens' harmony, 



chap, xxxi.] ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 177 

This enjoyment," continues the critic, in the spirit of a true 
reader, luxuriating over a beautiful thought, "this enjoyment, 
which is highly imagined, was a relaxation from the duties of 
his peculiar charge, in the depth of midnight, when the world is 
locked up in sleep and silence."* The music of the spheres is 
the old Platonic or Pythagorean doctrine ; but it remained for 
Milton to render it a particular midnight recreation to " purged 
ears," after the earthly toils of the day. And we partake of it 
with the Genius. We may say of the love of nature, what 
Shakspeare says of another love, that it 

Adds a precious seeing to the eye. 

And we may say also, upon the like principle, that it adds a precious 
hearing to the ear. This and imagination, which ever follows 
upon it, are the two purifiers of our sense, which rescue us from 
the deafening babble of common cares, and enable us to hear 
all the affectionate voices of earth and heaven. The starry 
orbs, lapsing about in their smooth and sparkling dance, sing to 
us. The brooks talk to us of solitude. The birds are the 
animal spirits of nature, carolling in the air, like a careless 



The gentle gales, 
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense 
Native perfumes ; and whisper whence they stole 
Those balmy spoils. — Paradise Lost, Book iv. 

The poets are called creators (Tlotrjral, Makers) because with their 
magical words they bring forth to our eyesight the abundant 
images and beauties of creation. They put them there, if the 
reader pleases ; and so are literally creators. But whether put 
there or discovered, whether created or invented (for invention 

* If the reader wishes to indulge himself in a volume full of sheer poetry 
with a pleasant companion, familiar with the finest haunts of the Muses, he 
cannot do better than get Wartorts Edition of the Minor Poems of 
Milton. The principal notes have been transferred by Mr. Todd to the 
sixth volume of his own valuable edition of Milton's Poetical Works ; 
but it is better to have a good thing entire. 
13 



178 THE INDICATOR. [chap xxxi. 



means notning but finding out), there they are. If they touch 
us, they exist to as much purpose as anything else which touches 
us. If a passage in King Lear brings the tears into our eyes, 
it is real as the touch of a sorrowful hand. If the flow of a 
song of Anaereon's intoxicates us, it is as true to a pulse within 
us as the wine he drank. We hear not their sounds with ears, 
nor see their sights with eyes ; but we hear and see both so 
truly, that we are moved with pleasure \ and the advantage, 
nay even the test, of seeing and hearing, at any time, is not in 
the seeing and hearing, but in the ideas we realize, and the 
pleasure we derive. Intellectual objects, therefore, inasmuch 
as they come home to us, are as true a part of the stock of 
nature, as visible ones ; and they are infinitely more abundant. 
Between the tree of a country clown and the tree of a Milton or 
Spenser, what a difference in point of productiveness ! Between 
the plodding of a sexton through a church-yard, and the walk 
of a Gray, what a difference ! What a difference between the 
Bermudas of a ship-builder and the Bermoothes of Shakspeare ! 
the isle 

Full of noises, 
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not ; 

the isle of elves and fairies, that chased the tide to and fro on 
the sea-shore ; of coral-bones and the knell of sea-nymphs : of 
spirits dancing on the sands, and singing amidst the hushes of 
the wind; of Caliban, whose brute nature enchantment had 
made poetical ; of Ariel, who lay in cowslip bells, and rode 
upon the bat ; of Miranda, who wept when she saw Ferdinand 
work so hard, and begged him to let her help ; telling him, 

I am your wife, if you will marry me ; 
If not, I'll die your maid. To be your fellow 
You may deny me ; but I'll be your servant, 
Whether you will or no. 

Such are the discoveries which the poets make for us : worlds, 
to which that of Columbus was but a handful of brute matter. 
America began to be richer for us the other day, when Hum- 



chap, xxxi.] ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 179 

bolch came back and told us of its luxuriant and gigantic vegeta- 
tion ; of the myriads of shooting lights, which revel at evening 
in the southern sky ; and of that grand constellation at which 
Dante seems to have made so remarkable a guess (Purgatorio, 
Cant, i., V. 22). The natural warmth of the Mexican and 
Peruvian genius, set free from despotism, will soon do all the 
rest for it ; awaken the sleeping riches of its eye-sight, and call 
forth the glad music of its affections, 

To return to our parks or landscapes, and what the poets can 
make of them. It is not improbable that Milton, by his Genius 
of the Grove at Harefield, covertly intended himself. He had 
been applied to by the Derbys to write some holiday poetry for 
them. He puts his consent in the mouth of the Genius, whose 
hand, he says, curls the ringlets of the grove, and who refreshes 
himself at midnight with listening to the music of the spheres ; 
that is to say, whose hand confers new beauty on it by its touch, 
and who has pleasure in solitude far richer and loftier than those 
of mere patrician mortals. 

See how finely Ben Jonson enlivens his description of Pens- 
hurst, the family- seat of the Sydney s : now with the creations 
of classical mythology, and now with the rural manners of the 
time. 

Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show, 

Or touch, of marble ; nor canst boast a row 

Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold ; 

Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told : 

Or stairs, or courts ; but stand' st an ancient pile : 

And these, grudged at, are reverenced the while. 

Thou joy'st in better marks, of soil, of air, 

Of wood, of water : therein thou art fair. 

Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport; 

Thy mount, to which the Dryads do resort ; 

Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made. 

Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade ; 

That taller tree, which of a nut was set 

At his great birth, where all the Muses met.* 

There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names 

Of many a S flvan, taken with his flames : 

* Sir Philip Sydney. 



180 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxi 

And thence the ruddy Satyrs oft provoke 
The lighter fawns to reach thy lady's oak. 
Thy copse too, named of Gamage, thou hast there, 
That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer, 
When thou wouldst feast, or exercise thy friends. 
The lower land, that to the river bends, 
Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed , 
The middle grounds thy mares and horses breed : 
Each bank doth yield thee conies ; and thy tops 
Fertile of wood, Ashore and Sydney copse, 
i To crown, — thy open table doth provide 
., siqt) R The purple pheasant with the speckled side. 

rr-r- * * * * * - * 

Iron ol 
~ ti Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, 

Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. 

The early cherry, with the later plum, 

Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come : 

The blushing apricot, and woolly peach, 

Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach : 

And though thy walls be of the country stone, 

They're rear'd with no man's ruin, no man's groan ; 

There's none that dwell about them wish them down ; 

But all come in, the farmer and the clown, 

And no one empty-handed, to salute 

Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. 

Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, 

Some nuts, some apples ; some that think they make 

The better cheeses, bring 'em ; or else send 

By their ripe daughters, whom they would commerd 

This way to husbands ; and whose baskets bear 

An emblem of themselves in plum or pear. 

Imagination enriches everything. A great library contains 
not only books, but 

The assembled souls of all that men held wise. 

Davenanl. 

The moon is Homer's and Shakspeare's moon, as well as the 
one we look at. The sun comes out of his chamber in the east, 
with a sparkling eye, " rejoicing like a bridegroom." The 
commonest thing becomes like Aaron's rod, that budded. Pope 
called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of hair, 
and justly gave it the honors of a constellation ; for he has hung 
it, sparkling for ever, in the eyes of posterity. A common mea- 



chap, xxxi.] CN THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION. 181 

dow is a sorry thing to a ditcher or a coxcomb; but by the help 
of its dues from imagination and the love of nature, the grass 
brightens for us, the air soothes us, we feel as we did in the 
daisied hours of childhood. Its verdures, its sheep, its hedge- 
row elms, — all these, and all else which sight, and sound, and 
associations can give it, are made to furnish a treasure of 
pleasant thoughts. Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of 
old, at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer 
a mere collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the 
grandeur of its history, and its literature ; its towers, and rivers ; 
its art, and jewellery, and foreign wealth ; its multitude of 
human beings all intent upon excitement, wise or yet to learn ; 
the huge and sullen dignity of its canopy of smoke by day ; the 
wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre at night-time ; and the 
noise of its many chariots, heard at the same hour, when the 
wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb. 



182 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxi 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Deaths of Little Children. t 

A Grecian philosopher being asked why he wept for the death 
of his son, since the sorrow was in vain, replied, " I weep on 
that account/' And his answer became his wisdom. It is only 
for sophists to contend, that we, whose eyes contain the fountains 
of tears, need never give way to them. It would be unwise not 
to do so on some occasions. Sorrow unlocks them in her balmy 
moods. The first bursts may be bitter and overwhelming ; but 
the soil on which they pour, would be worse without them. 
They refresh the fever of the soul — the dry misery which 
parches the countenance into furrows, and renders us liable to 
our most terrible " flesh-quakes." 

There are sorrows, it is true, so great, that to give them some 
of the ordinary vents is to run a hazard of being overthrown. 
These we must rather strengthen ourselves to resist, or bow 
quietly and drily down, in order to let them pass over us, as the 
traveller does the wind of the desert. But where we feel that 
tears would relieve us, it is false philosophy to deny ourselves 
at least that first refreshment ; and it is always false consolation 
to tell people that because they cannot help a thing, they are 
not to mind it. The true way is, to let them grapple with the 
unavoidable sorrow, and try to win it into gentleness by a 
reasonable yielding. There are griefs so gentle in their very 
nature, that it would be worse than false heroism to refuse them 
a tear. Of this kind are the deaths of infants. Particular 
circumstances may render it more or less advisable to indulge 
in grief for the loss of a little child ; but, in general, parents 
should be no more advised to repress their first tears on such 
an occasion, than to repress their smiles towards a child surviving, 
or to indulge in any other sympathy. It is an appeal to the same 
gentle tenderness : and such appeals are never made in vain. 
The end of them is an acquittal from the harsher bonds of affliction 
— 'from the tying down of the spirit to one melancholy idea. 



chap, xxxii.] DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN. 183 



It is the nature of tears of this kind, however strongly they 
may gush forth, to run into quiet waters at last. We cannot 
easily, for the whole course of our lives, think with pain of any 
good and kind person whom we have lost. It is the divine 
nature of their qualities to conquer pain and death itself: to 
turn the memory of them into pleasure ; to survive with a placid 
aspect in our imaginations. We are writing at this moment 
just opposite a spot which contains the grave of one inexpressi- 
bly dear to us. We see from our window the trees about it, and 
the church spire. The green fields lie around. The clouds 
are travelling over-head, alternately taking away the sunshine 
and restoring it. The vernal winds, piping of the flowery sum- 
mer-time, are nevertheless calling to mind the far-distant and 
dangerous ocean, which the heart that lies in that grave had 
many reasons to think of. And yet the sight of this spot does 
not give us pain. So far from it, it is the existence of that grave 
which doubles every charm of the spot ; which links the plea- 
sures of, our childhood and manhood together ; which puts a 
hushing tenderness in the winds, and a patient joy upon the 
landscape ; which seems to unite heaven and earth, mortality 
and immortality, the grass of the tomb and the grass of the green 
field : and gives a more maternal aspect to the whole kindness of 
nature. It does not hinder gaiety itself. Happiness was what 
its tenant, through all her troubles, would have diffused. To 
diffuse happiness and to enjoy it, is not only carrying on her 
wishes, but realizing her hopes ; and gaiety, freed from its only 
pollutions, malignity and want of sympathy, is but a child play- 
ing about the knees of its mother. 

The remembered innocence and endearments of a child stand 
Us instead of virtues that have died older. Children have not 
exercised the voluntary offices of friendship ; they have not 
chosen to be kind and good to us ; nor stood by us, from con- 
scious will, in the hour of adversity. But they have shared 
their pleasures and pains with us as well as they could ; the 
interchange of good offices between us has, of necessity, been 
less mingled with the troubles of the world ; the sorrow arising 
from their death is the only one which we can associate with 
their memories. These are happy thoughts that cannot die. 



184 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxii. 

Our loss may always render them pensive ; but they will not 
always be painful. It is a part of the benignity of Nature that 
pain does not survive like pleasure, at any time, much less 
where the cause of it is an innocent one. The smile will 
remain reflected by memory, as the moon reflects the light upon 
us when the sun has gone into heaven. 

When writers like ourselves quarrel with earthly pain (we 
mean writers of the same intentions, without implying, of course, 
anything about abilities or otherwise), they are misunderstood, 
if they are supposed to quarrel with pains of every sort. This 
would be idle and effeminate. They do not pretend, indeed, that 
humanity might not wish, if it could, to be entirely free from 
pain : for it endeavors, at all times, to turn pain into pleasure : 
or at least to set off the one with the other, to make the former 
a zest and the latter a refreshment. The most unaffected dig- 
nity of suffering does this, and, if wise, acknowledges it. The 
greatest benevolence towards others, the most unselfish relish of 
their pleasures, even at its own expense, does bull look to 
increasing the general stock of happiness, though content, if it 
could, to have its identity swallowed up in that splendid contem- 
plation. We are far from meaning that this is to be called self- 
ishness. We are far, indeed, from thinking so, or of so con- 
founding words. But neither is it to be called pain when most 
unselfish, if disinterestedness be truly understood. The pain 
that is in it softens into pleasure, as the darker hue of the rain- 
bow melts into the brighter. Yet even if a harsher line is to be 
drawn between the pain and pleasure of the most unselfish mind 
(and ill-health, for instance, may draw it), we should not quar- 
rel with it if it contributed to the general mass of comfort, and 
were of a nature which general kindliness could not avoid. 
Made as we are, there are certain pains without which it would 
be difficult to conceive certain great and overbalancing plea- 
sures. We may conceive it possible for beings to be made 
entirely hr.ppy ; but in our composition something of pain seems 
to be a necessary ingredient, in order that the materials may 
turn to as fine account as possible, though our clay, in the 
course of ages and experience, may be refined more and more. 
We may get rid of the worst earth, though not of earth itself. 



chap, xxxii.] DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN. 185 

Now the liability to the loss of children — or rather what ren- 
ders us sensible of it, the occasional loss itself — seems to be one 
of these necessary bitters thrown into the cup of humanity. We 
do not mean that every one must lose one of his children in order 
to enjoy the rest ; or that every individual loss afflicts us in the 
same proportion. We allude to the deaths of infants in general. 
These might be as few as we could render them. But if none 
at all ever took place, we should regard every little child as a 
man or woman secured ; and it will easily be conceived what a 
world of endearing cares and hopes this security would endan- 
ger. The very idea of infancy would lose its continuity with 
us. Girls and boys would be future men and women, not pre- 
sent children. They would have attained their full growth in 
our imaginations, and might as well have been men and women 
at once. On the other hand, those who have lost an infant, are 
never, as it were, without an infant child. They are the only 
persons who, in one sense, retain it always, and they furnish their 
neighbors with the same idea.* The other children grow up to 
manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortal- 
ity. This one alone is rendered an immortal child. Death has 
arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eter- 
nal image of youth and innocence. 

Of such as these are the pleasantest shapes that visit our fan- 
cy and hopes. They are the ever-smiling emblems of joy ; the 
prettiest pages that wait upon imagination. Lastly, " Of these 
are the kingdom of heaven." Wherever there is a province of 
that benevolent and all-accessible empire, whether on earth or 
elsewhere, such are the gentle spirits that must inhabit it. To 
such simplicity, or the resemblance of it, must they come. Such 
must be the ready confidence of their hearts, and creativeness of 
their fancy. And so ignorant must they be of the " knowledge 
of good and evil," losing their discernment of that self-created 
trouble, by enjoying the garden before them, and not being 
ashamed of what is kindly and innocent. 

" I sighed," says old Captain Dalton, " when I envied you the two bonnie 
children ; but I sigh not now to call either the monk or the soldier mine 
own.— Monastery, vol. iii. p. 341. 



186 THE INDICATOR. - [chap, xxxiii 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Poetical Anomalies of Shape. 

It is not one of the least instances of the force of habit to see 
how poetry and mythology can reconcile us to shapes, or rather 
combinations of shape, unlike anything in nature. The dog- 
headed deities of the Egyptians were doubtless not so monstrous 
in their eyes as in ours. The Centaurs of the Greeks, as Ovid 
has shown us, could be imagined possessing beauty enough for a 
human love story ; and our imaginations find nothing at all 
monstrous in the idea of an angel, though it partakes of the na- 
ture of the bird. The angel, it is true, is the least departure 
from humanity. Its wings are not an alteration of the human 
shape, but an addition to it. Yet, leaving a more awful wonder 
out of the question, we should be startled to find pinions growing 
out of the shoulder-blades of a child ; and we should wait with 
anxiety to see of what nature the pinions were, till we became 
reconciled to them. If they turned out to be ribbed and webbed, 
like those of the imaginary dragon, conceive the horror ! If, on 
the other hand, they became feathers, and tapered off, like those 
of a gigantic bird, combining also grace and splendor, as well 
as the power of flight, we can hardly fancy ourselves reconcileo 
to them. And yet again, on the other hand, the flying women> 
described in the Adventures of Peter Wilkins, do not shock us, 
though their wings partake of the ribbed and webbed nature, 
and not at all of the feathered. We admire Peter's gentle and 
beautiful bride, notwithstanding the phenomenon of the graundee, 
its light whalebone-like intersections, and its power of dropping 
about her like drapery. It even becomes a matter of pleasant 
curiosity. We find it not at all in the way. We can readily 
apprehend the delight he felt at possessing a creature so kind 



chap, xxxiii.] POETICAL ANOMALIES OF SHAPE. 131 

and sensitive ; and can sympathize with him in the happiness of 
that bridal evening, equally removed from prudery and gross- 
ness, which he describes with a mixture of sentiment and volup- 
tuousness beyond all the bridals we ever read. 

To imagine anything like a sympathy of this kind, it is of 
course necessary that the difference of form should consist in 
addition, and not in alteration. But the un-angel-like texture 
of the flying apparatus of fair Youwarkee (such, if we remem- 
ber, is her name) helps to show us the main reason why we are 
able to receive pleasure from the histories of creatures only half- 
human. The habit of reading prevents the first shock ; but we 
are reconciled in proportion to their possession of what we are 
pleased to call human qualities. Kindness is the great elevator. 
The Centaurs may have killed all the Lapithse, and shown con- 
siderable generalship to boot, without reconciling us to the brute 
part of them ; but the brutality melts away before the story of 
their two lovers in Ovid. Drunkenness and rapine made beasts 
of them; — sentiment makes human beings. Polyphemus in 
Homer is a shocking monster, not because he has only one eye, 
but because he murders and eats our fellow-creatures. But in 
Theocritus, where he is Galatea's lover, and sits hopelessly la- 
menting his passion, we only pity him. His deformity even in- 
creases our pity. We blink the question of beauty, and become 
one-eyed for his sake. Nature seems to do him an injustice in 
gifting him with sympathies so human, and at the same time 
prevent them from being answered ; and we feel impatient with 
the all-beautiful Galatea, if we think she ever showed him scorn 
as well as unwillingness. We insist upon her avoiding him with 
the greatest possible respect. 

These fictions of the poets, therefore, besides the mere excite- 
ment which they give the imagination, assist remotely to break 
the averseness and uncharitableness of human pride. And they 
may blunt the point of some fancies that are apt to come upon 
melancholy minds. When Sir Thomas Brown, in the infinite 
range of his metaphysical optics, turned his glass, as he no 
doubt often did, towards the inhabitants of other worlds, the sto- 
ries of angels and Centaurs would help his imaginative good- 



188 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxiii. 



nature to a more willing conception of creatures in other planets 
unlike those on earth : to other " lords of creation ;" and other, 
and perhaps nobler humanities, noble in spirit, though different 
in form. If indeed there can be anything in the starry end- 
lessness of existence, nobler than what we can conceive of love 
and generosity. 



chap, xxxiv.] SPRING AND DAISIES. 189 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Spring and Daisies. 

Spring, while we are writing, is complete. The winds have done 
their work. The shaken air, well tempered and equalised, has 
subsided ; the genial rains, however thickly they may come, do 
not saturate the ground, beyond the power of the sun to dry it 
up again. There are clear crystal mornings ; noons of blue 
sky and white cloud ; nights, in which the growing moon seems 
to lie looking at the stars, like a young shepherdess at her flock. 
A few days ago she lay gazing in this manner at the solitary 
evening star, like Diana, on the slope of a valley, looking up at 
Endymion. His young eye seemed to sparkle out upon the 
world ; while she, bending inwards, her hands behind her head, 
watched him with an enamored dumbness. 

But this is the quiet of Spring. Its voices and swift move- 
ments have come back also. The swallow shoots by us, like an 
embodied ardor of the season. The glowing bee has his will of 
the honied flowers, grappling with them as they tremble. We 
have not yet heard the nightingale or the cuckoo ; but we can 
hear them with our imagination, and enjoy them through the 
content of those who have. 

Then the young green. This is the most apt and perfect 
mark of the season, — the true issuing forth of the Spring. The 
trees and bushes are putting forth their crisp fans ; the lilac is 
loaded with bud ; the meadows are thick with the bright young 
grass, running into sweeps of white and gold with the daisies and 
buttercups. The orchards announce their riches, in a shower 
of silver blossoms. The earth in fertile woods is spread with 
yellow and blue carpets of primroses, violets, and hyacinths, 
over which the birch-trees, like stooping nymphs, hang with their 
thickening hair. Lilies-of-the-valley, stocks, columbines, lady- 



190 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxiv. 



smocks, and the intensely red piony which seems to anticipate 
the full glow of summer-time, all come out to wait upon the sea- 
son, like fairies from their subterraneous palaces. 

Who is to wonder that the idea of love mingles itself with that 
of this cheerful and kind time of the year, setting aside even 
common associations ? It is not only its youth, and beauty, and 
budding life, and the "passion of the groves," that exclaim with 
the poet, 

Let those love now, who never loved before ; 
And those who always loved, now love the more.* 

All our kindly impulses are apt to have more sentiment in them, 
than the world suspect ; and it is by fetching out this sentiment, 
and making it the ruling association, that we exalt the impulse 
into generosity and refinement, instead of degrading it, as is too 
much the case, into what is selfish, and coarse, and pollutes all 
our systems. One of the greatest inspirers of love is gratitude, — 
not merely on its common grounds, but gratitude for pleasures, 
whether consciously or unconsciously conferred. Thus we are 
thankful for the delight given us by a kind and sincere face ; 
and if we fall in love with it, one great reason is, that we long 
to return what we have received The same feeling has a con- 
siderable influence in the love that has been felt for men of 
talents, whose person or address have not been much calculated 
to inspire it. In spring-time joy awakens the heart ; with joy, 
awakes gratitude and nature ; and in our gratitude, we return, 
on its own principle of participation, the love that has been shown 
us. 

This association of ideas renders solitude in spring, and soli- 
tude in winter, two very different things. In the latter, we are 
better content to bear the feelings of the season by ourselves : in 
the former they are so sweet as well as so overflowing, that we 
long to share them. Shakspeare, in one of his sonnets, describes 
himself as so identifying the beauties of the Spring with the 
thought of his absent mistress, that he says he forgot them in 
their own character, and played with them only as with her 

* Pervigilium Veneris — Farnell's translation. 



chap, xxxiv.] SPRING AND DAISIES. 191 

shadow. See how exquisitely he turns a common-place into this 
fancy ; and what a noble brief portrait of April he gives us at 
the beginning. There is indeed a wonderful mixture of softness 
and strength in almost every one of the lines. 

From you have I been absent in the spring 

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, 

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ; 

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. 

Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 

Of different flowers in odor and in hue, 

Could make me any summer's story tell, 

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew, 

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, 

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose : 

They were but sweet, but patterns of delight, 

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 

Yet seemed it winter still ; and, you away, 

As with your shadow, I with these did play. 

Shakspeare was fond of alluding to April. He did not allow 
May to have all his regard, because she was richer. Perdita, 
crowned with flowers, in the Winter's Tale, is beautifully com- 
pared to 

Flora, 
Peering in April's front. 

There is a line in one of his sonnets, which, agreeably to the 
image he had in his mind, seems to strike up in one's face, hot 
and odorous, like perfume in a censer. 

In process of the seasons have I seen 

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned. 

His allusions to Spring are numerous in proportion. We all 
know the song, containing that fine line, fresh from the most 
brilliant of palettes : 

When daisies pied, and violets blue, 
And lady-smocks all silver white, 
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 
Do paint the meadtws with delight 



192 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxiv. 

We owe a long debt of gratitude to the daisy • and we take 
this opportunity of discharging a millionth part of it. If we 
undertook to pay it all, we should have had to write such a book, 
as is never very likely to be written, — a journal of numberless 
happy hours in childhood, kept with the feelings of an infant and 
the pen of a man. For it would take, we suspect, a depth of 
delight and a subtlety of words, to express even the vague joy 
of infancy, such as our learned departures from natural wisdom 
would find it more difficult to put together, than criticism and 
comfort, or an old palate and a young relish. — But knowledge 
is the widening and the brightening road that must conduct us 
back to the joys from which it led us ; and which it is destined 
perhaps to secure and extend. We must not quarrel with its 
asperities, when we can help. 

We do not know the Greek name of the daisy, nor do the dic- 
tionaries inform us ; and we are not at present in the way of con- 
sulting books that might. We always like to see what the 
Greeks say to these things, because they had a sentiment in their 
enjoyments. The Latins called the daisy Bellis or Bellus, as 
much as to say Nice One. With the French and Italians it has 
the same name as a Pearl, — Marguerite, Margarita, or, by way 
of endearment, Margheretina.* The same word was the name 
of a woman, and occasioned infinite intermixtures of compliment 
about pearls, daisies, and fair mistresses. Chaucer, in his 
beautiful poem of the Flower and the Leaf, which is evidently 
imitated from some French poetess, says, 

And at the laste there began anon 

A lady for to sing right womanly 

A bargaretf in praising the daisie, 

For as me thought among her notes sweet, 

She said " Si douset est la Margarete." 

" The Margaret is so sweet. " Our Margaret, however, in this 
allegorical poem, is undervalued in comparison with the laurel ; 

* This word is originally Greek, — Margarites ; and as the Franks proba 
bly brought it from Constantinople, perhaps they brought its association 
with the daisy also. 

f Bargaret, Bergerette, a little pastoral 



chap, xxxiv.] SPRING AND DAISIES. 193 

yet Chaucer perhaps was partly induced to translate it on ac- 
count of its making the figure that it does ; for he has informed 
us more- than once, in a very particular manner, that it was his 
favorite flower. There is an interesting passage to this effect in 
his Legend of the Good Women; where he says, that nothing 
but the daisied fields in spring could take him from his books. 

And as for me, though that I can but lite* 

On bookes for to read*! me delight, 

And to hem give I faith and full credence, 

And in my heart have hem in reverence, 

So heartily, that there is game none. 

That from my bookes maketh me to gone, 

But it be seldom, on the holy day ; 

Save certainly, when that the month of May 

Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing, 

And that the flowers ginnen for to spring, 

Farewell my booke, and my devotion. 

Now have I then eke this condition, 

That of all the flowers in the mead, 

Then love I most those flowers white and red, 

Such that men callen daisies in our town, 

To hem I have so great affection, 

As I said erst, when comen is the May, 

That in the bed there dawethf me no day, 

That I nam up and walking in the mead, 

To seen this flower agenst the sunne spread, 

When it upriseth early by the morrow, 

That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow. 

So glad am I, when that I have presence 

Of it, to done it all reverence, 

As she that is of all flowers the flower. 

He says that he finds it ever new, and that he shall love it till 
his " heart dies :" and afterwards, with a natural picture of his 
resting on the grass, 

Adown full softeley I gan to sink, 
And leaning on my elbow and my side, 
The long day I shopef me for to abide 
For nothing else, and I shall not lie, 
But for to look upon the daisie ; 
That well by reason men it call may 
The daisie, or else the eye of day. 

• Know but little. t Dawneth. J Shaped. 

14 



194 THE INDICATOR, [chap, xxxiv 

This etymology, which we have no doubt is the real one, is 
repeated by Ben Jonson, who takes occasion to spell the word 
" days-eyes;" adding, with his usual tendency to overdo a 
matter of learning, 

Days-eyes, and the lippes of cows ; 

videlicet, cowslips : which is a disentanglement of compounds, 
in the style of our pleasant parodists : 



-Puddings of the plum, 



And fingers of the lady. 

Mr. Wordsworth introduces his homage to the daisy with a 
passage from George Wither ; which, as it is an old favorite of 
ours, and extremely applicable both to this article and our whole 
work, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of repeating. It 
is the more interesting, inasmuch as it was written in prison, 
where the freedom of the author's opinions had thrown him.* 
He is speaking of his Muse, or Imagination. 

Her divine skill taught me this ; 
That from every thing I saw 
I could some instruction draw, 
And raise pleasure to the height 
From the meanest object's sight. 
By the murmur of a spring, 
Or the least bough's rustelling ; 
By a daisy, whose leaves spread 
Shut, when Titan goes to bed ; 
Or a shady bush or tree ; 
She could more infuse in me, 
Than all Nature's beauties can 
In some other wiser man. 

Mr. Wordsworth undertakes to patronise the Celandine, because 
nobody else will notice it ; which is a good reason. But though 
he tells us, in a startling piece of information, that 

* It is not generally known that Chaucer was four years in prison, in his 
old age, on the same account. He was a Wickliffite — one of the precursors 
of the Reformation. His prison, doubtless, was no diminisher of his love 
of the daisy. 



chap, xxxiv.] SPRING AND DAISIES. 195 

Poets, vain men in their mood, 
Travel with the multitude, 

yet he falls in with his old brethren of England and Normandy, 
and becomes loyal to the daisy. 

Be violets in their secret mews 

The flowers the wanton Zephyrs chuse ; 

Proud be the rose, with rains and dews 

Her head impearling ; 

Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, 

Yet hast not gone without thy fame ; 

Thou art indeed, by many a claim, 

The poet's darling. 
***** 

A nun demure, of lowly port ; 

Or sprightly maiden of Love's court, 

In thy simplicity the sport 

Of all temptations ; 
A queen in crown of rubies drest ; 
A starveling in a scanty vest ; 
Are all, as seem to suit thee best, 

Thy appellations. 

A little Cyclops, with one eye 

Staring to threaten or defy, — 

That thought comes next, and instantly 

The freak is over ; 
The freak will vanish, and behold ! 
A silver shield with boss of gold, 
That spreads itself, some fairy bold 

In fight to cover. 

I see thee glittering from afar ; 
And then thou art a pretty star, 
Not quite so fair as many are 

In heaven above thee ! • 
Yet like a star, with glittering crest, 
Self-poised in air, thou seem'st to rest ;— 
May peace come never to his nest, 

Who shall reprove thee. 

Sweet flower ! for by that name at last, 
When all my reveries are ppst, 
I call thee, and to that cleave fast ; 
Sweet silent creature ! 



196 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxiv 



That breath'st with me in sun and air, 
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair 
My heart with gladness, and a share 
Of thy meek nature. 

Mr. Wordsworth calls the daisy "an unassuming common- 
place of Nature/ 5 which it is ; and he praises it very becom- 
ingly for discharging its duties so cheerfully, in that universal 
character. But we cannot agree with him in thinking that it has 
a " homely face." Not that we should care, if it had ; for 
homeliness does not make ugliness ; but we appeal to everybody, 
whether it is proper to say this of la belle Marguerite. In the 
first place, its shape is very pretty and slender, but not too much 
so. Then it has a boss of gold, set round and irradiated with 
silver points. Its yellow and fair white are in so high a taste of 
contrast, that Spenser has chosen the same colors for a picture 
of Leda reposing : 

Oh wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man ! 

That her in daffodillies sleeping laid, 

From scorching heat her dainty limbs to shade. 

It is for the same reason, that the daisy, being chiefly white, 
makes such a beautiful show in company with the buttercup. 
But this is not all; for look at the back, and you find its fair 
petals blushing with a most delightful red. And how compactly 
and delicately is the neck set in green ! Belle et douce Margue- 
rite, aimable sczur du roi Kingcap, we would tilt for thee with a 
hundred pens, against the stoutest poet that did not find perfec- 
tion in thy cheek. 

But here somebody may remind us of the spring showers, and 
what drawbacks they are upon going into the fields. — Not at all 
so, when the spring is really confirmed, and the showers but 
April-like and at intervals. Let us turn our imaginations to the 
bright side of spring, and we shall forget the showers. You see 
they have been forgotten just this moment. Besides, we are not 
likely to stray too far into the fields ; and if we should, are there 
not hats, bonnets, barns, cottages, elm-trees, and good- wills ? 
We may make these things zests, if we please, instead of draw- 
backs. 



chap, xxxv.] MAY-DAY. 197 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

May-Day. 

May-day is a word, which used to awaken in the minds of 
our ancestors all the ideas of youth, and verdure, and blossom- 
ing, and love, and hilarity ; in short, the union of the two best 
things in the world, the love of nature, and the love of each 
other. It was the day, on which the arrival of the year at matu- 
rity was kept, like that of a blooming heiress. They caught her 
eye as she was coming, and sent up hundreds of songs of joy. 

Now the bright Morning- Star, Day's harbinger, 
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her 
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. 

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire 

Mirth, and youth, and warm desire : 

Woods and groves are of thy dressing ; 

Hill and dale, doth boast thy blessing. 
Thus we salute thee with our early song, 
And welcome thee, and wish thee long. 

These songs were stopped by Milton's friends the Puritans, 
whom in his old age he differed with, most likely on these points 
among others. But till then, they appear to have been as old, 
all over Europe, as the existence of society. The Druids are 
said to have had festivals in honor of May. Our Teutonic an- 
cestors had, undoubtedly ; and in the countries which had con- 
stituted the Western Roman Empire, Flora still saw thanks paid 
for her flowers, though her worship had gone away.* 

* The great May holiday observed over the West of Europe was known 
for centuries, up to a late period, under the name of the Belte, or Beltane. 
Such a number of etymologies, all perplexingly probable, have been found 
for this word, that we have been surprised to miss among them that of Bel- 
temps, the Fine Time or Season. Thus Printemps, the First Time, or 
Prime Season, is the Spring. 



198 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxv 

The homage which was paid to the Month of Love and flow- 
ers, may be divided into two sorts, the general and the individ- 
ual. The first consisted in going with others to gather May, 
and in joining in sports and games afterwards. On the first of 
the month, " the juvenile part of both sexes," says Bourne, in his 
Popular Antiquities , " were wont to rise a little after midnight 
and walk to some neighboring wood, where they broke down 
branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and 
crowns of flowers. When this was done, they returned with 
their booty about the rising of the sun, and made their doors and 
windows to triumph in the flowery spoil. The after part of the 
day was chiefly spent in dancing round a May-pole, which being 
placed in a convenient part of the village, stood there, as it were, 
consecrated to the Goddess of Flowers, without the least viola- 
tion offered to it, in the whole circle of the year." Spenser, in 
his Shepherd's Calendar, has detailed the circumstances, in a 
stvle like a rustic dance, 

Younge folke now flocken in — every where 
To gather May-buskets* — and swelling brere ; 
And home they hasten — the postes to dight, 
And all the kirk-pilours — eare day-light, 
With hawthorne buds — and sweet eglantine, 
And girlonds of roses — and soppes in wine. 
********* 

Sicker this morrowe, no longer agoe, 

I saw a shole of shepherds outgoe 

With singing, and shouting, and jolly chere ; 

Before them yodef a lustie tabrerej 

That to the many a hornpipe played, 

Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd. 

To see these folks make such jovisaunce, 

Made my heart after the pipe to daunce. 

Tho§ to the greene wood they speeden hem all, 

To fetchen home May with their musicall ; 

And home they bringen, in a royall throne, 

Crowned as king; and his queen attone|| 

Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend 

A fayre flocke of faeries, and a fresh bend 

* Buskets — Boskets — Bushes — from Boschetti, Ital. 
t Yode, Went. { Tabrere, a Tabourer. 

§ Tho> Then. || Mone, At once— With him 



chap, xxxv.] MAY-DAY. 199 

Of lovely nymphs. that I were there 
To help en the ladies their May-bush beare. 

The day was passed in sociality and manly sports ; — in arch- 
ery, and running, and pitching the bar, — in dancing, singing, 
playing music, acting Robin Hood and his company, and mak- 
ing a well-earned feast upon all the country dainties in season, 
It closed with an award of prizes. 

As I have seen the Lady of the May, 

Set in an arbor (on a holiday) 

Built by the Maypole, where the jocund swains 

Dance with the maidens to the bag-pipe's strains, 

When envious night commands them to be gone, 

Call for the merry youngsters one by one, . 

And for their well performance soon disposes, 

To this a garland interwove with roses, 

To that a carved hook, or well-wrought scrip, 

Gracing another with her cherry lip ; 

To one her garter, to another then 

A handkerchief cast o'er and o'er again ; 

And none returneth empty, that hath spent 

His pains to fill their rural merriment* 

Among the gentry and at court the spirit of the same enjoy- 
ments took place, modified according to the taste or rank of the 
entertainers. The most universal amusement, agreeably to fhe 
general current in the veins, and the common participation of 
flesh and blood (for rank knows no distinction of legs and knee- 
pans), was dancing. Contests of chivalry supplied the place of 
more rural gymnastics. But the most poetical and elaborate 
entertainment was the Mask. A certain flowery grace was 
sprinkled over all ; and the finest spirits of the time thought they 

* Britannia's Pastorals, by William Browne. Song the 4th. Browne, 
like his friend Wither, from whom we quoted a passage last week, wanted 
strength and the power of selection ; though not to such an extent. He is, 
however, well worth reading by those who can expatiate over a pastoral 
subject, like a meadowy tract of country : finding out the beautiful spots, 
and gratified, if not much delighted, with the rest. His genius, which was 
by no means destitute of the social part of passion, seems to have been 
turned almost wholly to description, by the beauties of his native county 
Devonshire. 



200 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxxv. 

showed both their manliness and wisdom, in knowing how to 
raise the pleasures of the season to their height. Sir Philip 
Sydney, the idea of whom has come down to us as a personifi- 
cation of all the refinement of that age, is fondly recollected by 
Spenser in this character. 

His sports were faire, his joyance innocent, 
Sweet without soure, and honey without gall : 
And he himself seemed made for merriment, 
Merrily masking both in bowre and hall. 
There was no pleasure nor delightfull play, 
When Astrophel soever was away. 

For he could pipe, and daunce, and caroll sweet* 
Amongst the shepherds in their shearing feast ; 
As somer's larke that with her song doth greet 
The dawning day forth comming from the East. 
And layes of love he also could compose ; 
Thrice happie she, whom he to praise did choose. 

Astrophel, St. 5. 

Individual homage to the month of May consisted in paying 
respect to it though alone, and in plucking flowers and flowering 
boughs to adorn apartments with. 

This maiden, in a morn betime, 

Went forth when May was in the prime 

To get sweet setywall, 
The honey-suckle, the harlock, 
The lily, and the lady-smock, 

To deck her summer-hall. 

BraytorCs Pastorals, Eclog. 4. 

But when morning pleasures are to be spoken of, the lovers of 
poetry who do not know Chaucer, are like those who do not 
know what it is to be up in the morning. He has left us two 
exquisite pictures of the solitary observance of May, in his 
P alamort and Arcite. They are the more curious, inasmuch as 
the actor in one is a lady, and in the other a knight. How far 
they owe any of their beauty to the original, the Theseide of 
Boccaccio, we cannot say ; for we never had the happiness of 
meeting with that rare work. The Italians have so neglected 
it, that they have not only never given it a rifacimento or re- 



chap, xxxv.] MAY-DAY. 201 

modelling, as in the instance of Boiardo's poem, but are almost 
as much unacquainted with it, we believe, as foreign nations. 
Chaucer thought it worth his while to be both acquainted with 
it, and to make others so ; and we may venture to say, that we 
know of no Italian after Boccaccio's age who was so likely to 
understand him to the core, as his English admirer, Ariosto not 
excepted. Still from what we have seen of Boccaccio's poetry, 
we can imagine the Theseide to have been too lax and long. 
If Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite be all that he thought proper 
to distil from it, it must have been greatly so; for it was an 
epic. But at all events the essence is an exquisite one. The 
tree must have been a fine old enormity, from which such honey 
could be drawn. 

To begin, as in duty bound, with the lady. How she spark- 
les through the antiquity of the language, like a young beauty 
in an old hood ! 

Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, 
Till it felle ones in a morowe of May, 
That Emelie— 

But we will alter the spelling where we can, as in a former 
instance, merely to let the reader see what a notion is in his 
way, if he suffers the look of Chaucer's words to prevent his 
enjoying him. 

Thus passeth year by year, and day by day, 
Till it fell once, in a morrow of May, 
That Emily, that fairer was to seen 
Than is the lily upon his stalk green, 
And fresher than the May with flowers new, 
(For with the rosy color strove her hue ; 
I n'ot which was the finer of them two) 
Ere it was day, as she was wont to do, 
She was arisen and all ready dight, 
For May will have no sluggardy a-night : 
The season pricketh every gentle heart, 
And maketh him out of his sleep to start, 
And saith, " Arise, and do thine observance." 

This maketh Emily have remembrance 
To do honor to May, and for to rise. 



202 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxv 

Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise : 
Her yellow hair was braided in a tress, 
Behind her back, a yarde* long I guess : 
And in the garden, at the sun uprist, 
She walketh up and down where as her list ; 
She gathereth flowers, party white and red 
To make a subtle garland for her head ; 
And as an angel, heavenly she sung. 
The great tower, that was so thick and strong, 
Which of the castle was the chief dongeon 
(Where as these knightes weren in prison, 
Of which I tolde you, and tellen shall), 
Was even joinant to the garden wall, 
There as this Emily had her playing. 

Bright was the sun, and clear that morwening — 

[How finely, to our ears at least, the second line of the couplet 
always rises up from this full stop at the first !] 

Bright was the sun, and clear that morwening, 
And Palamon, this woeful prisoner, 
As was his wont, by leave of his jailer, 
Was risen, and roamed in a chamber on high, 
In which he all the noble city sighf , 
And eke the garden, full of branches green, 
There as this fresh Emilia the sheenf 
Was in her walk, and roamed up and down. 

Sir Walter Scott, in his edition of Dryden, says upon the pas- 
sage before us, and Dryden's version of it, that " the modern 
must yield the palm to the ancient, in spite of , the beauty of his 
versification." We quote from memory, but this is the sub- 
stance of his words. For our parts, we agree with them, as to 
the consignment of the palm, but not as to the exception about 
the versification. With some allowance as to our present mode 
of accentuation, it appears to us to be touched with a finer sense 
of music even than Dryden's. It is more delicate, without any 
inferiority in strength, and still more various. 

But to our other portrait. It is as sparkling with young 

* These additional syllables are to be read slightly, like the e in French 
verse. 

t Saw. % The shining. 



chap, xxxv.] MAY-DAY. 203 



manhood, as the former is with a gentler freshness. What a 
burst of radiant joy is in the second couplet ; what a vital quick- 
ness in the comparison of the horse, "starting as the fire;" and 
what a native and happy ease in the conclusion ! 

The busy lark, the messenger of day, 
Saleweth * in her song the morrow grey ; 
And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright, 
That all the orient laugheth of the sight ; 
And with his stremes drieth in the greves f 
The silver droppes hanging in the leaves ; 
And Arcite, that is in the court real X 
With Theseus the squier principal, 
Is risen, and looketh on the merry day ; 
And for to do his observance to May, 
Rememb'ring on the point of his desire, 
He on the courser, starting as the fire, 
Is ridden to the fieldes him to play, 
Out of the court, were it a mile or tway : 
And to the grove, of which that I you told, 
By ^venture his way 'gan to hold, 
To maken him a garland of the greves, 
Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leaves, 
And loud he sung against the sunny sheen : 
" May, with all thy flowers and thy green, 
Right welcome be thou, faire freshe May : 
I hope that I some green here getten may." 
And from his courser, with a lusty heart, 
Into the grove full hastily he start, 
And in the path he roamed up and down. 

The versification of this is not so striking as the other, but 
Dryden again falls short in the freshness and feeling of the 
sentiment. His lines are beautiful ; but they do not come home 
to us with so happy and cordial a face. Here they are. The 
word morning in the first line, as it is repeated in the second, 
we are bound to consider as a slip of the pen ; perhaps for 
mounting. 

The morning-lark, the messenger of day, 
Saluteth in her song the morning grey ; 
And soon the sun arose with beams so bright, 

* Saluteth, t Groves. J Royal. 



204 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xxxv. 

That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight : 

He with his tepid rays the rose renews, 

And licks the drooping leaves and dries the dews ; 

When Arcite left his bed, resolv'd to pay 

Observance to the month of merry May : 

Forth on his fiery steed betimes be rode, 

That scarcely prints the turf on which he trod : 

At ease he seemed, and prancing o'er the plains, 

Turned only to the grove his horse's reins, 

The grove I named before ; and, lighted there, 

A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair ; 

Then turned his face against the rising day, 

And raised his voice to welcome in the May : 

" For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear, 

If not the first, the fairest of the year : 

For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours, 

And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers : 

When thy short reign is past, the feverish Sun 

The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on. 

So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight, 

Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite, 

As thou shalt guide my wandering steps to find 

The fragrant greens I seek, my brows to bind," 

His vows address'd, within the grove he stray'd. 

How poor is this to Arcite's leaping from his courser " with 
a lusty heart!" How inferior the common-place of the " fiery- 
steed," which need not involve any actual notion in the writer's 
mind, to the courser " starting as the fire ; " — how inferior the 
turning his face to "the rising day" and raising his voice to 
the singing "loud against the sunny sheen;" and lastly, the 
whole learned invocation and adjuration of May, about guiding 
his " wandering steps " and " so may thy tender blossoms," &c, 
to the call upon the " fair fresh May," ending with that simple, 
quick-hearted line, in which he hopes he shall get " some green 
here ; " a touch in the happiest vivacity ! Dryden's genius, for 
the most part, wanted faith in nature. It was too gross and 
sophisticate. There was as much difference between him and 
his original, as between a hot noon in perukes at St. James's, 
and one of Chaucer's lounges on the grass, of a May-morning. 

All this worship of May is over now. There i-s no issuing forth, 
in glad companies, to gather boughs ; no adorning of houses 



chap, xxxv.] MAY-DAY. 205 

with " the flowery spoil ; " no songs, no dances, no village sports 
and coronations, no courtly poetries, no sense and acknowledg- 
ment of the quiet presence of nature, in grove or glade. 

dolce primavera, o fior novelli, 

aure, o arboscelli, o fresche erbette, 

piagge benedette ; o colli, o monti, 

valli, o fiumi, o fonti, o verdi rivi, 

Palme lauri, ed olive, edere e mirti ; 

gloriosi spiriti de gli boschi ; 

Eco, o antri foschi, o chiare linfe, 

faretrate ninfe, o agresti Pani, 

Satiri e Silvani, o Fauni e Driadi, 

Naiadi ed Amadriadi, o Semidee, 

Oreadi e Napee, — or siete sole. — Sannazzaro. 

O thou delicious spring, ye new flowers, 

airs, youngling bowers ; fresh thickening grass, 

And plains beneath heaven's face ; hill3 and mountains, 

Valleys, and streams, and fountains ; banks of green, 

Myrtles, and palms serene, ivies, and bays ; 

And ye who warmed old lays, spirits o' the woods, 

Echoes, and solitudes, and lakes of light ; 

quivered virgins bright, Pans rustical, 

Satyres and Sylvans all, Dryads, and ye 

That up the mountains be ; and ye beneath 

In meadow or flowery heath, — ye are alone. 

Two hundred years ago, our ancestors used to delight in 
anticipating their May holidays. Bigotry came in, and frowned 
them away ; then Debauchery, and identified all pleasures with 
the town ; then Avarice, and we have ever since been mistaking 
the means for the end. 

Fortunately, it does not follow that we shall continue to do so. 
Commerce, while it thinks it is only exchanging commodities, is 
helping to diffuse knowledge. All other gains, — all selfish and 
extravagant systems of acquisition, — tend to over-do themselves, 
and to topple down by their own undiffused magnitude. The 
world, as it learns other things, may learn not to confound the 
means with the end, or at least (to speak more philosophically), 
a really poor means with a really richer. The veriest cricket- 
player on a green has as sufficient a quantity of excitement as 



203 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxv 

a fundholder or a partisan ; and health, and spirits, and manli- 
ness to boot. Knowledge may go on ; must do so, from neces- 
sity; and should do so, for the ends we speak of; but knowledge, 
so far from being incompatible with simplicity of pleasures, is 
the quickest to perceive its wealth. Chaucer would lie for 
hours, looking at the daisies. Scipio and Lselius could amuse 
themselves with making ducks and drakes on the water. Epa- 
minondas, the greatest of all the active spirits of Greece, was a 
flute-player and dancer. Alfred the Great could act the whole 
part of a minstrel. Epicurus taught the riches of temperance 
and intellectual pleasure in a garden. The other philosophers 
of his country walked between heaven and earth in the collo- 
quial bowers of Academus ; and " the wisest heart of Solomon," 
who found everything vain because he was a king, has left us 
panegyrics on the Spring and the " voice of the turtle/' because 
he was a poet, a lover, and a wise man. 



chap xxxvi.] SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY. 207 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Shakspeare's Birth-Day. 

The fifth of May, making the due allowance of twelve days 
from the twenty-third of April, according to the change of 
the Style, is the birth-day of Shakspeare. Pleasant thoughts 
must be associated with him in everything. If he is not to be 
born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have him 
with her on her blithest holidays, like her favorite lover. 

O thou divine human creature — greater name than even 
divine poet or divine philosopher — and yet thou wast all three — 
a very spring and vernal abundance of all fair and noble things 
is to be found in thy productions ! They are truly a second 
nature. We walk in them, with whatever society we please ; 
either with men, or fair women, or circling spirits, or with none 
but the whispering airs and leaves. Thou makest worlds of 
green trees and gentle natures for us, in thy forests of Arden, 
and thy courtly retirements of Navarre. Thou bringest us 
amongst the holiday lasses on the green sward ; layest us to 
sleep among fairies in the bowers of midsummer ; wakest us 
with the song of the lark and the silver-sweet voices of lovers : 
bringest more music to our ears, both from earth and from the 
planets ; anon settest us upon enchanted islands, where it wel- 
comes us again, from the touching of invisible instruments ; 
and after all, restorest us to our still desired haven, the arms of 
humanity. Whether grieving us or making us glad, thou 
makest us kinder and happier.. The tears which thou fetchest 
down, are like the rains of April, softening the times that come 
after them. Thy smiles are those of the month of love, the 
more blessed and universal for the tears. 

The birth-days of such men as Shakspeare ought to be kept, 



208 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxvi 

in common gratitude and affection, like those of relations whom 
we love. He has said, in a line full of him, that 

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 

How near does he become to us with his thousand touches ! 
The lustre and utility of intellectual power is so increasing in 
the eyes of the world, that we do not despair of seeing the time 
when his birth-day will be a subject of public rejoicing; when 
the regular feast will be served up in tavern and dwelling- 
house, the bust crowned with laurel, and the theatres sparkle 
with illuminations. 

In the mean time, it is in the power of every admirer of 
Shakspeare to honor the day privately. Rich or poor, busy or 
at leisure, all may do it. The busiest finds time to eat his 
dinner, and may pitch one considerate glass of wine down his 
throat. The poorest may call him to mind, and drink his 
memory in honest water. We had mechanically written health, 
as if he were alive. So he is in spirit ; — and the spirit of such 
a writer is so constantly with us, that it would be a good thing, 
a judicious extravagance, a contemplative piece of jollity, to 
drink his health instead of his memory. But this, we fear, 
should be an impulse. We must content ourselves with having 
felt it here, and drinking it in imagination. To act upon it, as 
a proposal of the day before yesterday, might be too much like 
getting up an extempore gesture, or practising an unspeakable 
satisfaction. 

An outline, however, may be drawn of the manner in which 
such a birth-day might be spent. The tone and coloring would 
be filled up, of course, according to the taste of the parties. — 
If any of our readers, then, have leisure as well as inclination 
to devote a day to the memory of Shakspeare, we would advise 
them, in the first place, to walk out, whether alone or in com- 
pany, and enjoy during the morning as much as possible of those 
beauties of nature, of which he has left us such exquisite pic- 
tures. They would take a volume of him in their hands the 
most suitable to the occasion ; not to hold themselves bound to 
sit down and read it, nor even to refer to it, if the original work 
of nature should occupy them too much ; but to read it, if they 



chap, xxxvi.] SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTH-DAY. 209 

read anything • and to feel that Shakspeare was with them sub- 
stantially as well as spiritually ; — that they had him with them 
under their arm. There is another thought connected with his 
presence, which may render the Londoner's walk the more in- 
teresting. Shakspeare had neither the vanity which induces a 
man to be disgusted with what everybody can enjoy ; nor, on 
the other hand, the involuntary self-degradation which renders 
us incapable of enjoying what is abased by our own familiarity 
of acquaintanceship. About the metropolis, therefore, there is 
perhaps not a single rural spot, any more than about Stratford- 
upon-Avon, which he has not himself enjoyed. The south side 
of London was the one nearest his theatre. Hyde Park was 
then, as it is now, one of the fashionable promenades. Rich- 
mond also was in high pride of estimation. At Greenwich 
Elizabeth held her court, and walked abroad amid the gallant 
service of the Sydneys and Raleighs. And Hampstead and 
Highgate, with the country about them, were, as they have been 
ever since, the favorite resort of the lovers of natural produc- 
tions. Nay, without repeating what we said in a former num- 
ber about the Mermaid in Cornhill, the Devil Tavern in Fleet- 
street, the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, and other town associations 
with Shakspeare, the reader who cannot get out of London on' 
his birth-day, and who has the luck to be hard at work in 
Chancery-lane or the Borough, may be pretty certain that 
Shakspeare has admired the fields and the May flowers there ; 
for the fields were close to the latter, perhaps came up to the 
very walls of the theatre ; and the suburban mansion and 
gardens of his friend Lord Southampton occupied the spot now 
called Southampton-buildings. It was really a country neighbor- 
hood. The Old Bourne (Holborn) ran by with a bridge over 
it ; and Gray's Inn was an Academic bower in the fields. 

The dinner does not much signify. The sparest or the most 
abundant will suit the various fortunes of the great poet ; only it 
will be as well for those who can afford wine, to pledge FalstafT 
in a cup of "sherris sack," which seems to have been a sort of 
sherry negus. After dinner Shakspeare's volumes will come 
well on the table ; lying among the dessert like laurels, where 
there is one, and supplying it where there is not. Instead of 
15 



210 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxvi, 



songs, the persons present may be called upon for scenes. But 
no stress need be laid on this proposition, if they do not like to 
read out aloud. The pleasure of the day should be as much at 
liberty as possible ; and if the company prefer conversation, it 
will not be very easy for them to touch upon any subject which 
Shakspeare shall not have touched upon also. If the en- 
thusiasm is in high taste, the ladies should be crowned with vio- 
lets, which (next to the roses of their lips) seem to have been his 
favorite flower. After tea should come singing and music, espe- 
cially the songs which Arne set from his plays, and the ballad 
of Thou soft-flowing Avon. If an engraving or bust of him could 
occupy the principal place in the room, it would look like the 
" present deity" of the occasion ; and we have known a very 
pleasant effect produced by everybody's bringing some quotation 
applicable to him from his works, and laying it before his image, 
to be read in the course of the evening. 



chap, xxxvii.] LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. 211 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

La Belle Dame Sans Mercy. 

Among the pieces printed at the end of Chaucer's works, and 
attributed to him, is a translation, under this title, of a poem of 
the celebrated Alain Chartier, secretary to Charles the Sixth and 
Seventh. It was the title which suggested to a friend the verses 
at the end of our present Number.* "We wish Alain could have 
seen them. He would have found a Troubadour air for them, 
and sung them to La Belle Dame Agnes Sorel, who was, how- 
ever, not Sans Mercy. The union of the imaginative and the real 
is very striking throughout, particularly in the dream. The 
wild gentleness of the rest of the thoughts and of the music are 
alike old, and they are also alike young ; for love and imagina- 
tion are always young, let them bring with them what times and 
accompaniments they may. If we take real flesh and blood with 
us, we may throw ourselves, on the facile wings' of our sympa- 
thy, into what age we please. It is only by trying to feel, as 
well as to fancy, through the medium of a costume, that writers 
become fleshless masks and cloaks — things like the trophies of 
the ancients, when they hung up the empty armor of an enemy. 

LA BELLE DAME g INS MERCY. 

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, 

Alone and palely loitering ? 
The sedge is wither'd from the lake, 

And no birds sing. 

* The late Mr. Keats. This beautiful little effusion is reprinted in the In- 
dicator , where it originally appeared, because it is not to be found in the 
collected works of that delightful poet. 



212 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxvii. 



Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, 
So haggard and so wo-begone ? 

The squirrel's granary is full, 
And the harvest 's done. 

I see a lily on thy brow, 

With anguish moist and fever dew ; 
And on thy cheek a fading rose 

Fast withereth too. 

I met a lady in the meads, 
Full beautiful, a fairy's child ; 

Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
And her eyes were wild. 

I set her on my pacing steed, 
And nothing else saw all day long ; 

For sideways would she lean and sing 
A fairy's song. 

I made a garland for her head, 
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; 

She look'd at me as she did love, 
And made sweet moan. 

She found me roots of relish sweet, 
And honey wild, and manna dew ; 

And sure in language strange she said, 
I love thee true. 

She took me to her elfin grot, 
And there she gazed and sighed deep, 

And there I shut her wild sad eyes— 
So kiss'd to sleep. 

And there we slumber'd on the moss, 
And there I dream'd, ah wo betide, 

The latest dream I ever dream'd 
On the celd hill side. 

I saw pale kings, and princes too, 
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all ; 

Who cried, " La Belle Dame Sans Mercy 
Hath thee in thrall !" 

I saw their starved lips in the gloom 
With horrid warning gaped wide, 

And I awoke and found me here, 
On th 5 cold hill side. 



chap, xxxvn.] LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCY. 213 

And this is why I sojourn here, 

Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is witherM from the lake, 

And no birds sing. 

Caviare * 

* " Caviare to the multitude."— Hamlet. The signature was of Mr. 
Keats's own putting ; a touching circumstance, when we call to mind the 
treatment he met with, and consider how his memory has triumphed over 
it. 



214 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxviii. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Of Sticks 

Among other comparative injuries which we are accustomed tc 
do to the characters of things animate and inanimate, in order 
to gratify our human vanity, such as calling a rascal a dog 
(which is a great compliment), and saying that a tyrant makes 
a beast of himself (which it would be a very good thing, and a 
lift in the world, if he could), is a habit in which some persons 
indulge themselves, of calling insipid things or persons sticks. 
Such and such a one is said to write a stick ; and such another 
is himself called a stick ; — a poor stick, a mere stick, a stick of 
a fellow* 

We protest against this injustice done to those useful and once 
flourishing sons of a good old stock. Take, for instance, a com- 
mon cherry-stick, which is one of the favorite sort. In the first 
place, it is a very pleasant substance to look at, the grain run- 
ning round it in glossy and shadowy rings. Then it is of primae- 
val antiquity, handed down from scion to scion through the most 
flourishing of genealogical trees. In the third place, it is of 
Eastern origin ; of a stock, which it is possible may have fur- 
nished Haroun Al Raschid with a djereed, or Mahomet with a 
camel-stick, or Xenophon in his famous retreat with fences, or 
Xerxes, with tent- pins, or Alexander with a javelin, or Sardana- 
palus with tarts, or Solomon with a simile for his mistress' lips, 
or Jacob with a crook, or Methusalem with shadow, or Zoroaster 
with mathematical instruments, or the builders of Babel with 
scaffolding. Lastly, how do you know but that you may have 
eaten cherries off this very stick ? for it was once alive with 
sap, and rustling with foliage, and powdered with blossoms, and 
red and laughing with fruit. Where the leathern tassel now 
hangs, may have dangled a bunch of berries ; and instead of 
the brass ferule poking in the mud, th * tip was growing into the 
air with its youngest green. 



chap, xxxviii.] OF STICKS. 215 

The use of sticks in general is of the very greatest antiquity. 
It is impossible to conceive a state of society in which boughs 
should not be plucked from trees for some purpose of utility or 
amusement. Savages use clubs, hunters require lances, and 
shepherds their crooks. Then came the sceptre, which is ori- 
ginally nothing but a staff, or a lance, or a crook, distinguished 
from others. The Greek word for sceptre signifies also a walk- 
ing-stick. A mace, however plumped up and disguised with 
gilding and a heavy crown, is only the same thing in the hands 
of an inferior ruler ; and so are all other sticks used in office, 
from the baton of the Grand Constable of France down to the 
tipstaff of a constable in Bow-street. As the shepherd's dog is 
the origin of the gentlest whelp that lies on a hearth-cushion, and 
of the most pompous barker that jumps about a pair of greys, 
so the merest stick used by a modern Arcadian, when he is 
driving his flock to Leadenhall-market with a piece of candle in 
his hat, and No. 554 on his arm, is the first great parent and 
original of all authoritative staves, from the beadle's cane 
wherewith he terrifies charity-boys who eat bull's-eyes in 
church-time, up to the silver mace of the verger, to the wands 
of parishes and governors, — the tasselled staff, wherewith the 
Band-Major so loftily picks out his measured way before the mu- 
sicians, and which he holds up when they are to cease ; to the 
White Staff of the Lord Treasurer ; the court-officer emphati- 
cally called the Lord Gold Stick ; the Bishop's Crosier (Pedum 
Episcopale), whereby he is supposed to pull back the feet of his 
straying flock; and the royal and imperial sceptre aforesaid, 
whose holders, formerly called Shepherds of the people (Tlomives 
Aawv) were seditiously said to fleece more than to protect. The 
Vaulting- Staff, a luxurious instrument of exercise, must have 
been used in times immemorial for passing streams and rough 
ground with. It is the ancestor of the staff with which Pilgrims 
travelled. The Staff and Quarter-Staff of the country Robin 
Hoods is a remnant of the war-club. So is the Irish Shilelah. 
which a friend has well defined to be " a stick with two butt- 
ends." The originals of all these, that are not extant in our 
own country, may still be seen wherever there are nations un- 
civilized. The Negro Prince, who asked our countrymen what 



216 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxviii. 

was sain of hiifi m Europe, was surrounded in state with a parcel 
of ragged fellows with shilelahs over their shoulders — Lord Gold 
Sticks. 

But sticks have been great favorites with civilized as well as 
uncivilised nations ; only the former have used them more for 
help and ornament. The Greeks were a sceptropherous people. 
Homer probably used a walking-stick because he was blind ; but 
we have it on authority that Socrates did. On his first meeting 
with Xenophon, which was in a narrow passage, he barred up 
the way with his stick, and asked him, in his good-natured man- 
ner, where provisions were to be had. Xenophon having told 
him, he asked again if he knew where virtue and wisdom were 
to be had ; and this reducing the young man to a nonplus, he 
said, " Follow me, and learn;" which Xenophon did, and be- 
came the great man we have all heard of. The fatherly story 
of Agesilaus, who was caught amusing his little boy with riding 
on a stick, and asked his visitor whether he was a father, is too 
well known for repetition. 

There is an illustrious anecdote connected with our subject in 
Roman history. The highest compliment which his country- 
men thought they could pay to the first Scipio, was to call him a 
walking-stick; for such is the signification of his name. It was 
given him for the filial zeal with which he used to help his old 
father about, serving his decrepit age instead of a staff. But the 
Romans were not remarkable for sentiment. What we hear in 
general of their sticks, is the thumpings which servants get in 
their plays ; and above all, the famous rods which the lictors 
carried, and which being actual sticks, must have inflicted hor- 
rible dull bruises and malignant stripes. They were pretty 
things, it must be confessed, to carry before the chief magis- 
trate ! just as if the King or Lord Chancellor were to be preced. 
ed by a cat-o'-nine-tails. 

Sticks are not at all in such request with modern times as they 
were. Formerly, we suspect, most of the poorer ranks in Eng- 
land used to carry them, both on account of the prevalence of 
manly sports, and for security in travelling; for before the 
invention of posts and mail-coaches, a trip to Scotland or 
Northumberland was a thing to make a man write his will. 



chap, xxxviii.] OF STICKS. 217 

As they came \o be ornamented, fashion adopted them. The 
Cavaliers of Charles the First's time were a sticked race, as 
well as the apostolic divines and puritans, who appear to have 
carried staves, because they read of them among the patriarchs. 
Charles the First, when at his trial, held out his stick to forbid 
the Attorney-General's proceeding. There is an interesting 
little story connected with a stick, which is related of Andrew 
Marvell's father (worthy of such a son), and which, as it is 
little known, we will repeat ; though it respects the man more 
than the machine. He had been visited by a young lady, who 
in spite of a stormy evening persisted in returning across the 
Humber, because her family would be alarmed at her absence. 
The old gentleman, high-hearted and cheerful, after vainly try- 
ing to dissuade her from perils which he understood better than 
she, resolved in his gallantry to bear her company. He accord- 
ingly walked with her down to the shore, and getting into the 
boat, threw his stick to a friend, with a request, in a lively tone 
of voice, that he would preserve it for a keepsake. He then 
cried out merrily, " Ho-hoy for heaven !" and put off with his 
visitor. They were drowned. 

As commerce increased, exotic sticks grew in request from 
the Indies. Hence the Bamboo, the Whanghee, the Jambee 
which makes such a genteel figure under Mr. Lilly's auspices 
in the Tatler ; and our light modern cane, which the Sunday 
stroller buys at sixpence the piece, with a twist of it at the end 
for a handle. The physicians, till within the last few score of 
years, retained among other fopperies which they converted into 
gravities, the wig and gold-headed cane. The latter had been 
an indispensable sign-royal of fashion, and was turned to infinite 
purposes of accomplished gesticulation. One of the most courtly 
personages in the Rape of the Lock is 

Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, 
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane. 

Sir Richard Steele, as we have before noticed, is reproached by 
a busy-body of those times for a habit of jerking his stick against 
the pavement as he walked. When swords were abolished by 
Act of Parliament, the tavern-boys took to pinking each other, 



21S THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxviii 

as injuriously as they could well manage, with their walking- 
sticks. Macklin the player was tried for his life for poking a 
man's eye out in this way. Perhaps this helped to bring the 
stick into disrepute ; for the use of it seems to have declined 
more and more, till it is now confined to old men, and a few 
among the younger. It is unsuitable to our money-getting 
mode of rushing hither and thither. Instead of pinking a man's 
ribs or so, or thrusting out his eye from an excess of the jovial, 
we break his heart with a bankruptcy. 

Canes became so common before the decline of the use of 
sticks, that whenever a man is beaten with a stick, let it be of 
what sort it may, it is still common to say that he has had 
a " caning :" which reminds us of an anecdote more agreeable 
than surprising ; though the patient doubtless thought the 
reverse. A gentleman, who was remarkable for the amenity 
of his manners, accompanied by a something which a bully 
might think it safe to presume upon, found himself compelled to 
address a person who did not know how to " translate his style," 
in the following words, which were all delivered in the sweetest 
tone in the world, with an air of almost hushing gentility : — 
" Sir, I am extremely sorry — to be obliged to say, — that you 
appear to have a very erroneous notion of the manners that 
become your situation in life ; — and I am compelled with great 
reluctance to add" (here he became still softer and more deli- 
cate) " that, if you do not think fit, upon reflection, to alter this 
very extraordinary conduct towards a gentleman, I shall be 

under the necessity of caning you." The other treated the 

thing as a joke; and to the delight of the bystanders, received" 
a very grave drubbing. 

There are two eminent threats connected with caning, in the 
history of Dr. Johnson. One was from himself, when he was 
told thatFoote intended to mimic him on the stage. He replied, 
that if "the dog" ventured to play his tricks with him, he would 
step out of the stage-box, chastise him before the audience, and 
then throw himself upon their candor and common sympathy. 
Foote desisted, as he had good reason to do. The Doctor would 
have read hi n a stout lesson, and then made a speech to the 
audience as forcible ; so that the theatrical annals have to 



chap, xxxviii.] OF STICKS. 219 

regret, that the subject and Foote's shoulders were not afforded 
him to expatiate upon. It would have been a fine involuntary 
piece of acting, — the part of Scipio by Dr. Johnson. — The other 
threat was against the Doctor himself from Macpherson, the 
compounder of Ossian. It was for denying the authenticity of 
that work ; a provocation the more annoying, inasmuch as he 
did not seem duly sensible of its merits. Johnson replied to 
Macpherson's letter by one of contemptuous brevity and pith ; 
and contented himself with carrying about a large stick, with 
which he intended to repel Macpherson in case of an assault. 
Had they met, it would have been like " two clouds over the 
Caspian;" for both were large-built men. 

We recollect another bacular Johnsonian anecdote. When 
he was travelling in Scotland, he lost a huge stick of his in the 
little treeless island of Mull. Bos well told him he would recover 
it : but the Doctor shook his head. "No no," said he; " let any- 
body in Mull get possession of it, and it will never be restored. 
Consider, sir, the value of such a piece of timber here." 

The most venerable sticks now surviving are the smooth 
amber-colored canes, in the possession of old ladies. They have 
sometimes a gold head, but oftener a crook of ivory. But they 
have latterly been much displaced by light umbrellas, the han- 
dles of which are imitations of them ; and these are gradually 
retreating before the young parasol, especially about town. The 
old ladies take the wings of the stage-coaches, and are run away 
with by John Pullen, in a style of infinite convenience. The 
other sticks in use are for the most part of cherry, oak, and crab, 
and seldom adorned with more than a leathern tassel : often 
with nothing. Bamboo and other canes do not abound, as might 
be expected from our intercourse with India ; but commerce in 
this as in other respects has overshot its mark. People cannot 
afford to use sticks, any more than bees could in their hives. 
Of the common sabbatical cane we have already spoken. There 
is a sufficing little manual, equally light and lissom, yclept an 
ebony switch ; but we have not seen it often. 

That sticks, however, are not to be despised by the leisurely, 
any one who has known what it is to want words, or to slice off 
the head of a thistle, will allow. The utility of the stick seems 



220 THE INDICATOR. [chat xxxviii 

divisible into three heads; first, to give a general consciousness 
of power ; second, which may be called a part of the first, to 
help the demeanor ; and third, which may be called a part of 
the second, to assist a man over the gaps of speech — the little 
awkward intervals, called want of ideas. 

Deprive a man of his stick, who is accustomed to carry one, 
and with what a diminished sense of vigor and gracefulness he 
issues out of his house ! Wanting his stick, he wants himself. 
His self-possession, like Aeres's on the duel-ground, has gone 
out of his fingers' ends ; but restore it him, and how he resumes 
his energy ! If a common walking-stick, he cherishes the top of 
it with his fingers, putting them out and back again, with a fresh 
desire to feel it in his palm ! How he strikes it against the 
ground, and feels power come back to his arm ! How he 
makes the pavement ring with the ferule, if in a street ; or de- 
capitates the downy thistles aforesaid, if in a field ! Then if it 
be a switch, how firmly he jerks his step at the first infliction of 
it on the air ! How he quivers the point of it as he goes, holding 
the handle with a straight-dropped arm and a tight grasp ! How 
his foot keeps time to the switches ! How he twigs the luckless 
pieces of lilac or other shrubs, that peep out of a garden railing ! 
And if a sneaking-looking dog is coming by, how he longs to 
exercise his despotism and his moral sense at once, by giving him 
an invigorating twinge ! 

But what would certain men of address do without their cane 
or switch ? There is an undoubted Rhabdosophy, Sceptrosophy, 
or Wisdom of the Stick, besides the famous Divining Rod, with 
which people used to discover treasures and fountains. It sup- 
plies a man with inaudible remarks, and an inexpressible number 
of graces. Sometimes, breathing between his teeth, he will 
twirl the end of it upon his stretched-out toe ; and this means, 
that he has an infinite number of easy and powerful things to say, 
if he had a mind. Sometimes he holds it upright between his 
knees, and tattoos it against his teeth or underlip, which implies 
that he meditates coolly. On other occasions he switches the 
side of his boot with it, which announces elegance in general. 
Lastly, if he has not a bon-mot ready in answer to one, he has 
only to thrust his stick at your ribs, and say, " Ah ! you rogue !" 



chap, xxxviii.] OF STICKS. 221 

which sets him above you in an instant, as a sort of patronising 
wit, who can dispense with the necessity of joking. 

At the same time, to give it its due zest in life, a stick has its 
inconveniences. If you have yellow gloves on, and drop it in 
the mud, a too hasty recovery is awkward. To have it stick 
between the stones of a pavement is not pleasant, especially if it 
snap the ferule off; or more especially if an old gentleman or 
lady is coming behind you, and after making them start back 
with winking eyes, it threatens to trip them up. To lose the 
ferule on a country road, renders the end liable to the growth of 
a sordid brush, which, not having a knife with you, or a shop in 
which to borrow one, goes pounding the wet up against your 
legs. In a crowded street you may have the stick driven into a 
large pane of glass; upon which an unthinking tradesman, 
utterly indifferent to a chain of events, issues forth and demands 
twelve and sixpence. 



222 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxix. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

Of the Sight of Shops. 

Though we are such lovers of the country, we can admire Lon- 
don in some points of view ; and among others, from the enter- 
tainment to be derived from its shops. Their variety and bril- 
liancy can hardly fail of attracting the most sluggish attention : 
and besides reasons of this kind, we can never look at some of 
them without thinking of the gallant figure they make in the 
Arabian Nights, with their Bazaars and Bezesteins ; where the 
most beautiful of unknowns goes shopping in a veil, and the 
most graceful of drapers is taken blindfold to see her. He goes, 
too, smitten at heart to think of the danger of his head ; and 
finds her seated among her slaves (exquisite themselves, only 
very inferior), upon which she encourages him to sit near her, 
and lutes are played ; upon which he sighs, and cannot help 
looking tenderly ; upon which she claps her hands, and a charm- 
ing collation is brought in ; upon which they eat, but not much. 
A dance ensues, and the ocular sympathy is growing tenderer, 
when an impossible old woman appears, and says that the Sultan 
is coming. Alas ! How often have we been waked up, in the 
person of the young draper or jeweller, by that ancient objec- 
tion ! How have we received the lady in the veil, through 
which we saw nothing but her dark eyes and rosy cheeks ! How 
have we sat cross-legged on cushions, hearing or handling the 
lute, whose sounds faded away like our enamored eyes ! How 
often have we not lost our hearts and left-hands, like one of the 
Calendars ? Or an eye, like another ? Or a head ; and resum- 
ed it at the end of the story ? Or slept (no, not slept) in the 
Sultan's garden at Schiraz with the fair Persian. 

But to return (as well as such enamored persons can) to our 
shops. We prefer the country a million times over for walking 



chap, xxxix.] OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS. 223 

in generally, especially if we have the friends in it that enjoy it 
as well ; but there are seasons when the very streets may vie 
with it. If you have been solitary, for instance, for a long time, 
it is pleasant to get among your fellow-creatures again, even to 
be jostled and elbowed. If you live in town, and the weather 
is showery, you may get out in the intervals of rain, and then a 
quickly-dried pavement and a set of brilliant shops are pleasant. 
Nay, we have known days, even in spring, when a street shall 
outdo the finest aspects of the country ; but then it is only when 
the ladies are abroad, and there happens to be a run of agreea- 
ble faces that day. For whether it is fancy or not, or whether 
certain days do not rather bring out certain people, it is a com- 
mon remark, that one morning you shall meet a succession of 
good looks, and another encounter none but the reverse. We 
do not merely speak of handsome faces ; but of those which are 
charming, or otherwise, whatever be the cause. We suppose, 
that the money-takers are all abroad one day, and the heart- 
takers the other. 

It is to be observed, that we are not speaking of utility in this 
article, except indeed the great utility of agreeableness. A 
candid leather-cutter therefore will pardon us, if do we not find 
anything very attractive in his premises. So will his friend the 
shoemaker, who is bound to like us rural pedestrians. A stationer 
too, on obvious accounts, will excuse us for thinking his a very 
dull and bald-headed business. We cannot bear the horribly 
neat monotony of his shelves, with their load of virgin paper, 
their slates and slate pencils that set one's teeth on edge, 
their pocket-books, and above all, their detestable ruled account- 
books, which at once remind one of the necessity of writing, 
and the impossibility of writing anything pleasant on such 
pages. The only agreeable thing, in a stationer's shop when it 
has it, is the ornamental work, the card-racks, hand-screens, &c, 
which remind us of the fair morning fingers that paste and gild 
such things, and surprise their aunts with presents of flowery 
boxes. But we grieve to add, that the prints which the station- 
ers furnish for such elegancies, are not in the very highest taste. 
They are apt to deviate too scrupulously from the originals. 
Their well-known heads become too anonymous. Their young 



224 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxix. 

ladies have casts in their eyes, a little too much on pne side even 
for the sidelong divinities of Mr. Harlowe. 

In a hatter's shop we can see nothing but the hats ; and the 
reader is acquainted with our pique against them. The beaver 
is a curious animal, but the idea of it is not entertaining enough 
to convert a window full of those requisite nuisances into an 
agreeable spectacle. It is true, a hatter, like some other trades- 
men, may be pleasanter himself, by reason of the adversity of 
his situation. We cannot say more for the cruel-shop next door, 
a name justly provocative of a pun. It is customary, however, 
to have sign-paintings of Adam and Eve at these places ; which 
is some relief to the monotony of the windows ; only they remind 
us but too well of these cruel necessities to which they brought 
us. The baker's next ensuing is a very dull shop, much inferior 
to the gingerbread baker's, whose parliament we used to munch 
at school. The tailor's makes one as melancholy to look at it, as 
the sedentary persons within. The hosier's is worse ; particu- 
larly if it has a Golden Leg over it ; for that precious limb is 
certainly not symbolical of the weaver's. The windows, half 
board and half dusty glass, which abound in the City, can 
scarcely be turned to a purpose of amusement, even by the 
most attic of dry-salters. We own we have half a longing to 
break them, and let in the light of nature upon their recesses ; 
whether they belong to those more piquant gentlemen, or to 
bankers, or any other high and wholesale personages. A light 
in one of these windows in the morning is, to us, one of the very 
dismallest reflections on humanity. We wish we could say 
something for a tallow-chandler's, because everybody abuses it; 
but we cannot. It must bear its fate like the man. A good 
deal might be said in behalf of candle-light ; but in passing 
from shop to shop, the variety is so great, that the imagination 
has not time to dwell on any one in particular. The ideas they 
suggest must be obvious and on the surface. A grocer's and 
tea-dealer's is a good thing. It fills the mind instantly with 
a variety of pleasant tastes, as the ladies in Italy on certain 
holidays pelt the gentlemen with sweetmeats. An undertaker's 
is as great a baulk to one's spirits, as a loose stone to one's foot. 
It gives one a deadly jerk. But it is pleasant upon the whole 



chap, xxxix.] OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS. 225 

to see the inhabitant looking carelessly out of doors, or hammer- 
ing while humming a tune ; for why should he die a death at 
every fresh order for a coffin ? An undertaker walking mer- 
rily drunk by the side of a hearse, is a horrid object ; but an 
undertaker singing and hammering in his shop, is only rapping 
death himself on the knuckles. The dead are not there ; the 
altered fellow-creature is not there ; but only the living man, 
and the abstract idea of death ; and he may defy that as much 
as he pleases. An apothecary's is the more deadly thing of the 
two ; for the coffin may be made for a good old age, but the 
draught and the drug are for the sickly. An apothecary's looks 
well, however, at night-time, on account of the colored glasses. 
It is curious to see two or three people talking together in the 
light of one of them, and looking profoundly blue. There are 
two good things in the Italian warehouse, — its name and its 
olives ; but it is chiefly built up of gout. Nothing can be got 
out of a brazier's windows, except by a thief: but we under- 
stand that it is a good place to live at for those who cannot pro- 
cure water-falls. A music-shop with its windows full of title- 
pages, is provokingly insipid to look at, considering the quantity 
of slumbering enchantment inside, which only wants waking. A 
bookseller's is interesting, especially if the books are very .old or 
very new, and have frontispieces. But let no author, with or 
without money in his pocket, trust himself in the inside, unless, 
like the bookseller, he has too much at home. An author is like 
a baker ; it is for him to make the sweets, and others to buy and 
enjoy them. And yet not so. Let us not blaspheme the " divi- 
nity that stirs within us." The old comparison of the bee is 
better ; for even if his toil at last is his destruction, and he is 
killed in order to be plundered, he has had the range of nature 
before he dies. His has been the summer air, and the sunshine, 
and the flowers ; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gen- 
tle eyes have been upon him. Let others eat his honey that 
please, so that he has had his morsel and his song. — A book-stall 
is better for an author than a regular shop ; for the books are 
cheaper, the choice often better and more ancient ; and he may 
look at them, and move on without the horrors of not buying 
anything ; unless indeed the master or mistress stands looking at 
16 



226 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxix 

him from the shop- door ; which is a vile practice. It is neces- 
sary, we suppose, to guard against pilferers ; but then ought not 
a stall-keeper, of any perception, to know one of us real mag- 
nanimous spoilers of our gloves from a sordid thief? A tavern 
and coffee-house is a pleasant sight, from its sociality ; not to 
mention the illustrious club memories of the times of Shakspeare 
and the Tatlers. We confess that the commonest public-house 
in town is not such an eyesore to us as it is to some. There may 
be a little too much drinking and roaring going on in the middle 
of the week ; but what, in the mean time, are pride, and ava- 
rice, and all the unsocial vices about ? Before we object to 
public-houses, and above all to their Saturday evening recrea- 
tions, we must alter the systems that make them a necessary 
comfort to the poor and laborious. Till then, in spite of the 
vulgar part of the polite, we shall have an esteem for the " Devil 
and the Bag o' Nails ;" and like to hear, as we go along on Satur- 
day night, the applauding knocks on the table that follow the song 
of " Lovely Nan," or " Brave Captain Death" or " Tobacco is 
an Indian Weed" or " Why, Soldiers, why ;" or " Says Plato, 
why should man be vain;" or that judicious and unanswerable 
ditty commencing 

Now what can man more desire 
Nor sitting by a sea-coal fire . 
And on his knees, &c. 

We will even refuse to hear anything against a gin-shop, till 
the various systems of the moralists and economists are dis- 
cussed, and the virtuous leave off seduction and old port. In 
the mean time, we give up to anybody's dislike the butcher's and 
fishmonger's. And yet see how things go by comparison. We 
remember, in our boyhood, a lady from the West Indies, of a 
very delicate and high-bred nature, who could find nothing about 
our streets that more excited her admiration than the butchers' 
shops. She had no notion, from what she had seen in her own 
country, that so ugly a business could be carried on with so 
much neatness, and become actually passable. An open potato- 
shop is a dull bleak-looking place, except in the height of sum- 
mer. A cheesemonger's is then at its height of annoyance, 



chap, xxxix.] OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS. 227 



unless you see a pavior or bricklaj er coming out with his three 
penn'orth on his bread — a better sight than the glutton's wad- 
dling away from the fishmonger's. A poulterer's is a dead- 
bodied business, with its birds and their lax necks. We dislike 
to see a bird anywhere but in the open air, alive and quick. Of 
all creatures, restraint and death become its winged vivacity 
the least. For the same reason we hate aviaries. Dog-shops 
are tolerable. A cook-shop does not mingle the agreeable with 
the useful. We hate its panes, with Ham and Beef scratched 
upon them in white letters. An ivory-turner's is pleasant, with 
its red and white chessmen, and little big-headed Indians on 
elephants ; so is a toy-shop, with its endless delights for chil- 
dren. A coach-maker's is not disagreeable, if you can see the 
painting and panels. An umbrella-shop only reminds one of a 
rainy day, unless it is a shop for sticks also, which, as we have 
already shown, are meritorious articles. The curiosity-shop is 
sometimes very amusing, with its mandarins, stuffed birds, odd 
old carved faces, and a variety of things as indescribable as 
bits of dreams. The green-grocer carries his recommendation 
in his epithet. The hair-dressers are also interesting as far as 
their hair goes, but not as their heads — we mean the heads in 
their windows. One of the shops we like least is an angling 
repository, with its rod for a sign, and a fish dancing in the 
agonies of death at the end of it. We really caAnot see what 
equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out < % water by 
the jaws, merely because it has not the power of making a 
noise ; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers 
would hardly delight in catching shrieking fish. An optician's 
is not very amusing, unless it has those reflecting-glasses in 
which you see your face run off on each side into attenuated 
width, or upwards and downwards in the same manner, in 
dreary longitude. A saddler's is good, because it reminds one 
of horses. A Christian sword-maker's or gun-maker's is edify- 
ing. A glass-shop is a beautiful spectacle ; it reminds one of 
the splendors of a fairy palace. We like a blacksmith's for the 
sturdy looks and thumpings of the men, the swarthy color, the 
fiery sparkles and the thunder-breathing throat of the furnace. 
Of other houses of traffic, not common in the streets, there is 



228 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xxxix 

something striking to us in the large, well- conditioned horses of 
the brewers, and the rich smoke rolling from out their chimneys. 
We also greatly admire a wharf, with its boats, barrels, and 
packages, and the fresh air from the water, not to mention the 
smell of pitch. It carries us at once a hundred miles over the 
water. For similar reasons, the crabbedest old lane has its 
merits in our eyes, if there is a sail-maker's in it, or a boat- 
builder's and water at the end. How used old Roberts of 
Lambeth to gratify the aspiring modesty of our school- coats, 
when he welcomed us down to his wherries and captains on a 
holiday, and said, " Blue against Black at any time," meaning 
the Westminster boys ! And the colleges will ratify his praise, 
taking into consideration the difference of the numbers that go 
there from either cloisters. But of all shops in the streets a 
print-seller's pleases us the most. We would rather pay a shil- 
ling to Mr. Colnaghi, Mr. Molteno, or Messieurs Moon and Boys, 
to look at their windows on one of their best-furnished days, 
than we would for many an exhibition. We can see fine en- 
gravings there, translations from Raphael and Titian, which 
are newer than hundreds of originals. We do not despise a 
pastry-cook's, though we would rather not eat tarts and puffs 
before the half-averted face of the prettiest of accountants, 
especially with a beggar watching and praying all the while at 
the door. We need not expatiate on the beauties of a florist's, 
where you see unwithering leaves, and roses made immortal. 
A dress warehouse is sometimes really worth stopping at, for its 
flowered draperies and richly-colored shawls. But one's plea- 
sure is apt to be disturbed (ye powers of gallantry ! bear witness 
to the unwilling pen that writes it) by the fair faces that come 
forth, and the half-polite, half-execrating expression of the 
tradesman that bows them out ; for here takes place the chief 
enjoyment of the mystery yclept shopping ; and here, while 
some ladies give the smallest trouble unwillingly, others have 
an infinity of things turned over, for the mere purpose of wast- 
ing their own time and the shopman's. We have read of a 
choice of a wife by cheese. It is difficult to speak of preference 
in such matters, and all such single modes of trial must be some- 
thing equivocal ; but we must say, that of all modes of the 



chap, xxxix.] OF THE SIGHT OF SHOPS. 229 

kind, we should desire no better way of seeing what ladies we 
admired most, and whom least, than by witnessing this trial of 
them at a linen-draper's counter. 



230 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xl 



CHAPTER XL. 

A nearer View of some of the Shops. 

In the general glance that we have taken at shops, we found 
ourselves unwillingly compelled to pass some of them too 
quickly. It is the object therefore of the present article to enter 
into those more attractive thresholds, and look a little about us. 
We imagine a fine day ; time, about noon ; scene, any good 
brilliant street. The ladies are abroad in white and green ; the 
beaux lounging, conscious of their waists and neckcloths ; the 
busy pushing onward, conscious of their bills; the dogs and 
coaches — but we must reserve this out-of-door view of the streets 
for a separate article. 

To begin then, where our shopping experience began, with 
the toy-shop : 

Visions of glory, spare our aching sight ! 

Ye just-breech'd ages, crowd not on our soul ! 

We still seem to have a lively sense of the smell of that gor- 
geous red paint, which was on the handle of our first wooden 
sword ! The pewter guard also — how beautifully fretted and 
like silver did it look ! How did we hang it round our shoulder 
by the proud belt of an old ribbon ; — then feel it well suspended ; 
then draw it out of the sheath,~eager to cut down four savage 
men for ill-using ditto of damsels ! An old muff made an ex- 
cellent grenadier's cap; or one's hat and feather, with the 
assistance of three surreptitious large pins, became fiercely 
modern and military. There it is, in that corner of the window 
— the same identical sword, to all appearance, which kept us 
awake the first night behind our pillow. We still feel ourselves 
little boys, while standing in this shop ; and for that matter, so 
we do on other occasions. A field has as much merit in our 
eyes, and gingerbread almost as much in our mouths, as at that 



chap, xl.] A NEARER VIEW OF SOME OF THE SHOPS. 231 

daisy-plucking and cake-eating period of life. There is the 
trigger- rattling gun fine of its kind, but not so complete a thing 
as the sword. Its memories are not so ancient : for Alexander 
or St. George did not fight with a musket. Neither is it so true 
a thing ; it is not " like life." The trigger is too much like that 
of a cross-bow ; and the pea which it shoots, however hard, 
produces even to the imaginative faculties of boyhood a humili- 
ating flash of the mock-heroic. It is difficult to fancy a dragon 
killed with a pea : but the shape and appurtenances of the 
sword being genuine, the whole sentiment of massacre is as 
much in its wooden blade, as if it were steel of Damascus. 
The drum is still more real, though not so heroic. — In the corner 
opposite are battle-doors and shuttle-cocks, which have their 
maturer beauties ; balls, which possess the additional zest of the 
danger of breaking people's windows ; — ropes, good for swing- 
ing and skipping, especially the long ones which others turn for 
you, while you run in a masterly manner up and down, or skip 
in one spot with an easy and endless exactitude of toe, looking 
alternately at their conscious faces ; — blood-allies, with which 
(he possessor of a crisp finger and thumb-knuckle causes the 
smitten marbles to vanish out of the ring ; kites, which must 
appear to more vital birds a ghastly kind of fowl, with their 
grim long white faces, no bodies, and endless tails ; cricket-bats, 
manly to handle ; — trap-bats, a genteel inferiority ; — swimming- 
corks, despicable ; horses on wheels, an imposition on the infant 
public ; — rocking horses, too much like Pegasus, ardent yet 
never getting on ; — Dutch toys, so like life, that they ought to 
be better ; — Jacob's ladders, flapping down one over another 
their tintinnabulary shutters ;— dissected maps, from which the 
infant statesmen may learn how to dovetail provinces and king- 
doms ; — paper posture-makers, who hitch up their knees against 
their shoulder-blades, and dangle their legs like an opera dancer ; 
— Lilliputian plates, dishes, and other household utensils, in 
which a grand dinner is served up out of half an apple ; — boxes 
of paints, to color engravings with, always beyond the outline ; 
ditto of bricks, a very sensible and lasting toy, which we except 
from a grudge we have against the gravity of infant geome- 
tries ; — whips, very useful for cutting people's eyes unawares ; 



232 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xl 

— hoops, one of the most ancient as well as excellent of toys ; — 
sheets of pictures, from A apple-pie up to farming, military, 
and zoological exhibitions, always taking care that the Fly is as 
large as the Elephant, and the letter X exclusively appropriated 
to Xerxes ; — musical deal-boxes, rather complaining than sweet, 
and more like a peal of bodkins than bells ; — penny trumpets, 
awful at Bartlemy-tide ; — Jew's harps, that thrill and breathe 
between the lips like a metal tongue ; — carts — carriages— hobby- 
horses, upon which the infant equestrian prances about proudly 
on his own feet ; — in short, not to go through the whole repre- 
sentative body of existence — dolls, which are so dear to the 
maternal instincts of little girls. We protest, however, against 
that abuse of them, which makes them full -dressed young ladies 
in body, while they remain infant in face ; especially when they 
are of frail wax. It is cultivating finery instead of affection. 
We prefer good honest plump limbs of cotton and saw-dust, 
dressed in baby-linen ; or even our ancient young friends, with 
their staring dotted eyes, red varnished faces, triangular noses, 
and Rosinante wooden limbs — not, it must be confessed, exces- 
sively shapely or feminine, but the reverse of fragile beauty, 
and prepared against all disasters. 

The next step is to the Pastry-cook's, where the plain bun is 
still the pleasantest thing in our eyes, from its respectability in 
those of childhood. The pastry, less patronised by judicious 
mothers, is only so much elegant indigestion : yet it is not easy 
to forget the pleasure of nibbling away the crust all round a 
raspberry or currant tart, in order to enjoy the three or four 
delicious semicircular bites at the fruity plenitude remaining. 
There is a custard with a wall of paste round it, which provokes 
a siege of this kind ; and the cheese-cake has its amenities of 
approach. The acid flavor is a relief to the mawkishness of 
the biffin or pressed baked apple, and an addition to the glib and 
quivering lightness of the jelly. Twelfth Cake, which when 
cut looks like the side of a rich pit of earth covered with snow, is 
pleasant from warmer associations. Confectionery does not seem 
in the same request as of old ; its paint has hurt its reputation. 
Yet the school-boy has still much to say for its humbler suavi- 
ties. Kisses are very amiable and allegorical. Eight or ten of 



chap, xl.] A NEARER VIEW OF SOME OF THE SHOPS. 233 

them, judiciously wrapped up in pieces of letter paper, have 
saved many a loving heart the trouble of a less eloquent billet- 
doux. Candied citron we look upon to be the very acme and 
atticism of confectionery grace. Preserves are too much of a 
good thing, with the exception of the jams that retain their fruit- 
skins. "Jam satis." They qualify the cloying. Yet marma- 
lade must not be passed over in these times, when it has been 
raised to the dignity of the peerage. The other day there was a 
Duke of Marmalade in Hayti, and a Count of Lemonade, — so 
called, from places in which those eminent relishes are manufac- 
tured. After all, we must own that there is but one thing for 
which we care much at a pastry-cook's, except our old acquaint- 
ance the bun ; especially as we can take up that, and go on. 
It is an ice. Fancy a very hot day ; the blinds down ; the 
loungers unusually languid ; the pavement burning one's feet ; 
the sun, with a strong outline in the street, baking one whole 
side of it like a brick-kiln ; so that everybody is crowding on 
the other, except a man going to intercept a creditor bound for 
the Continent. Then think of a heaped-up ice, brought upon a 
salver with a spoon. What statesman, of any warmth of imagi- 
nation, would not pardon the Neapolitans in summer, for an 
insurrection on account of the want of ice ? Think of the first 
sidelong dip of the spoon in it, bringing away a well-sliced lump ; 
then of the sweet wintry refreshment, that goes lengthening 
down one's throat ; and lastly, of the sense of power and satis- 
faction resulting from having had the ice. 

Not heaven itself can do away that slice ; 

But what has been, has been ; and I have had my ice. 

We unaccountably omitted two excellent shops last week, — ■ 
the fruiterer's and the sculptor's. There is great beauty as 
well as agreeableness in a well-disposed fruiterer's window, 
Here are the round piled-up oranges, deepening almost into red, 
and heavy with juice ; the apple with its brown red cheek, as 
if it had slept in the sun ; the pear, swelling downwards ; throng- 
ing grapes, like so many tight little bags of wine ; the peach, 
whose handsome ^eathern coat strips off so finely; the pearly or 



234 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xu 

ruby-like currants, heaped in light long baskets ; the red little 
mouthful of strawberries; the larger purple ones of plums; 
cherries, whose old comparison with lips is better than anything 
new; mulberries, dark and rich with juice, fit to grow over 
what Homer calls the deep black-watered fountains ; the swell- 
ing pomp of melons; the rough inexorable-looking cocoa-nut, 
milky at heart ; the elaborate elegance of walnuts ; the quaint 
cashoo-nut ; almonds, figs, raisins, tamarinds, green leaves, — in 
short, 

Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields 
In India East or West, or middle shore 
In Pontus or the Punick coast, or where 
Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat 
Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell. 

Milton. 

There is something of more refined service in waiting upon a 
lady in a fruit-shop, than in a pastry-cook's. The eating of 
tarts, as Sir Walter Scott handsomely saith in his Life of Dry- 
den (who used to enjoy them, it seems, in company with " Madam 
Reeves"), is "no inelegant pleasure;' 5 but there is something 
still more graceful and suitable in the choosing of the natural 
fruit, with its rosy lips and red cheeks. A white hand looks 
better on a basket of plums, than in the doubtful touching of 
syrupy and sophisticated pastry. There is less of the kitchen 
about the fair visitor. She is more Pomona-like, native, and o 
the purpose. We help her, as we would a local deity. 

Here be grapes whose lusty blood 

Is the learned poets' good, 

Sweeter yet did never crown 

The head of Bacchus ; — nuts more brown 

Than the squirrels 5 teeth that crack them ; 

Deign, fairest fair, to take them. 

For these black-ey'd Driope 

Hath often times commanded me, 

With my clasped knee to climb ; 

See how well the lusty time 

Hath deckt their rising cheeks in red, 

Such as on your lips is spread. 

Here be berries for a Queen, 



chap, xl.] A NEARER VIEW OF SOME OF THE SHOPS. 235 



Some be red, some be green ; 

These are of that luscious meat, 

The great God Pan himself doth eat. 

All these, and what the woods can yield 

The hanging mountain or the field, 

I freely offer, and ere long 

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong. 

Till when humbly leave I take, 

Lest the great Pan do awake, 

That sleeping lies in a deep glade, 

Under a broad beech's shade. 

Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess. 

How the poets double every delight for us, with their imagina- 
tion and their music ! 

In the windows of some of the sculptors' shops, artificial fruit 
may be seen. It is a better thing to put upon a mantel-piece 
than many articles of greater fashion ; but it gives an abomina- 
ble sensation to one's imaginary teeth. The incautious epicure 
who plunges his teeth into " a painted snow-ball" in Italy (see 
Brydone's Tour in Sicily and Malta), can hardly receive so 
jarring a balk to his gums, as the bare apprehension of a bite 
at a stone peach ; but the farther you go in a sculptor's shop 
the better. Many persons are not aware that there are show- 
rooms in these places, which are well worth getting a sight of 
by some small purchase. For the best plaster casts the Italian 
shops, such as Papera's in Marylebone-street, Golden-square, 
and Sarti's in Greek-street, are the best. Of all the shop-plea- 
sures that are "not inelegant," an hour or two passed in a place 
of this kind is surely one of the most polite. Here are the gods 
and heroes of old, and the more beneficent philosophers, ancient 
and modern. You are looked upon, as you walk among them, 
by the paternal majesty of Jupiter, the force and decision of 
Minerva, the still more arresting gentleness of Venus, the 
budding compactness of Hebe, the breathing inspiration of 
Apollo. Here the celestial Venus, naked in heart and body, 
ties up her locks, her drapery hanging upon her lower limbs. 
Here the Belvidere Apollo, breathing forth his triumphant dis- 
dain, follows with an earnest eye the shaft that has killed the 
serpent. Here the Graces, linked in an affectionate group, mee 



236 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xl. 

you in the naked sincerity of their innocence and generosity, 
their hands "open as day/ 5 and two advancing for one receding. 
Here Hercules, like the building of a man, looks down from his 
propping club, as if half disdaining even that repose. There 
Mercury, with his light limbs, seems just to touch the ground, 
ready to give a start with his foot and be off again. Bacchus, 
with his riper cheek, and his thicker hanging locks, appears to 
be eyeing one of his nymphs. The Vatican Apollo near him, 
leans upon the stump of a tree, the hand which hangs upon it 
holding a bit of his lyre, the other arm thrown up over his head, 
as if he felt the air upon his body, and heard it singing through 
the strings. In a corner on another side, is the Crouching Venus 
of John of Bologna, shrinking just before she steps into the bath. 
The Dancing Faun is not far off, with his animal spirits, and the 
Piping Faun, sedater because he possesses an art more accom- 
plished. Among the other divinities, we look up with venera- 
tion to old Homer's head, resembling an earthly Jupiter. Plato 
beholds us with a bland dignity — a beauty unimpairable by 
years. How different from the brute impulse of Mars, the 
bloated self-will of Nero, or the dull and literal effeminacy of 
some of the other emperors ! There is a sort of presence in 
sculpture, more than in any other representations of art. It is 
curious to see how instinctively people will fall into this senti- 
ment when they come into a place with busts and statues in it, 
however common. They hush, as if the images could hear 
them. In our boyhood, some of our most delightful holidays 
were spent in the gallery of the late Mr. West, in Newman- 
street. It runs a good way back from the street, crossing a 
small garden, and opening into loftier rooms on the other side 
of it. We remember how the world used to seem shut out from 
us 'the moment the street-door was closed, and we began step- 
ping down those long carpeted aisles of pictures, with statues in 
the angles where they turned. We had observed everybody 
walk down them in this way, like the mild possessor of the man- 
sion, and we went so likewise. We have walked down with 
him at night to his painting-room, as he went in his white flannel 
gown, with a lamp in his hand, which shot a lustrous twilight 
upon the pictured walls in passing ; and everything looked so 



chap, xl..] A NEARER VIEW OF SOME OF THE SHOPS. 237 

quiet and graceful, that we should have thought it sacrilege to 
hear a sound beyond the light tread of his footsteps. But it was 
the statues that impressed us still more than the pictures. It 
seemed as if Venus and Apollo waited our turning at the cor- 
ners; and there they were, always the same, placid and intuitive, 
more human and bodily than the paintings, yet too divine to be 
over real. It is to that house with the gallery in question, and 
the little green plot of ground, surrounded with an arcade and 
busts, that we owe the greatest part of our love for what is Ita- 
lian and belongs to the fine arts. And if this is a piece of pri- 
vate history, with which the readers have little to do, they will 
excuse it for the sake of the greatest of all excuse, which is 
Love. 



END OF PART I . 



* 

4 



WILEY & PUTNAM'S 

LIBRARY OF 

CHOICE READING. 

INDICATOR 

PART II. 



* 



THE 



INDICATOR: 



A MISCELLANY FOR THE FIELDS AND 
THE FIRESIDE. 



U I 



BY LEIGH HUNT. 



IN TWO PARTS, 
PART II. 



FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. 



NEW-YORK : 

WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY. 

1845. 



R. CRAlGftEAD'S Power Press, Stereotyped by T. B. SMITH, 

112 Fulton Street. 216 William Street 



CONTENTS, 



Page 

Chap, XLI. A Word oh Two More on Sticks . . . ' . 1 

XLII. The Daughter of Hippocrates .... 4 

XLIII. The Italian Girl ..... . 10 

XLIV. A "Now" 17 

XLV. The Honorable Mr. Robert Boyle . . .22 

XL VI. Superfine Breeding 24 

XL VII. Shaking Hands 27 

XL VIII. On Receiving a Sprig of Laurel from Vaucluse . 29 

XLIX. Coaches 32 

L. Remarks upon Andrea de Basso's Ode to a Dead 

Body 52 

LI. Thoughts and Guesses on Human Nature . 58 

LII. The Hamadryad . . . .68 

LIII. The Nurture of Triptolemus W .70 

LIV. On Commendatory Verses . . . . . 77 

LV. A Word upon Indexes 88 

LVI. An Old School-Book . . . 98 

LVII. Of Dreams , 93 

LVIII. A Human Animal, and the Other Extreme . 104 

LIX. Return of Autumn 115 

LX. The Maid-Servant 117 

LXI. The Old Lady .121 

LXII. Pulci 125 

LXIII. My Books . . 136 

LXIV. Bees, Butterflies, &c. 152 



vi CONTENTS 



THE COMPANION 



Page 
Chap. I. An Earth upon Heaven 169 

II. Bad Weather ... .... 174 

III. Fine Days in January and February . . .179 
■y IV. Walks Home by Night in Bad Weather. — Watch- 
men 182 

V. Secret of some Existing Fashions .... 189 

VI. Rain Out of a Clear Sky 192 

VII. The Mountain of the Two Lovers . . . .193 

VIII. The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona . .196 

IX. On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving . . 209 

X. Pantomimes 212 

XI. Cruelty to Children 217 

XII. Houses on Fire ... .... 221 

XIII. A Battle of Ants. — Desirableness of Drawing a 

Distinction between Powers common to other 
Animals, and those Peculiar to Man . . . 223 

XIV. A Walk from Dulwich to Brockham ... 234 



THE INDICATOR. 



There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem 
to belong to the interior of Fairy-land ; but they have been well authenti- 
cated. It indicates to honey-hunters, where the nests of wild bees are to be 
found. It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer ; and on finding 
itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. 
While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, 
where he observes all that passes ; and the hunters, when they have helped 
themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. — This is the 
CucuiLUs Indicator of Linnaeus, otherwise called the Moroc, Bee 
Cuckoo, or Honey Bird. 

There he arriving, round about doth flie, 

And takes survey with busie, curious eye : 

Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly. — Spenser. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

A word or two more on Sticks. 

A correspondent, writing to us on this subject, says : — " In my 
day I have indulged an extravagant fancy for canes and sticks ; 
but, like the children of the fashionable world, I have, in run- 
ning the round, grown tired of all my favorites, except one of a 
plain and useful sort. Conceive my mortification in finding this 
my last prop not included in your catalogue of sticks most in 
use ; especially since it has become, among us men of sticks, 
the description most approved. The present day, which is one 
of mimicry, boasts scarcely any protection in the very stick I 
allude to ; and yet, because it is so unpresuming in its appear- 
ance, and so cheap, the gentlemen ( of a day ? will not conde- 
scend to use it. We, Sir, who make a stick our constant com- 
panion (notwithstanding our motives may be misunderstood), 
2 



2 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xli. 

value the tough, the useful, the highly picturesque ' Ash Plant/ 
Its still and gentlemanly color ; its peculiar property of bending 
round the shoulders of a man, without breaking (in the event of 
our using it that way) ; the economy of the thing, as economy 
is the order of the day (at least in minor concerns) ; its being 
the best substitute for the old-fashioned horse- whip in a morning- 
ride, and now so generally used in lieu of the long hunting-whip 
in the sports of the chase ; answering every purpose for gates, 
&c, without offering any temptation to do the work of a whip- 
per-in ; — all this, and much more, might be said of the neglected 
Ground Ash." 

We must cry mercy on the estimable stick here referred to, 
and indeed on several other sorts of wood, unjustly omitted in 
our former article. We also neglected to notice those ingenious 
and pregnant walking-sticks, which contain swords, inkstands, 
garden-seats, &c, and sometimes surprise us with playing a tune. 
As the ancient poets wrote stories of gods visiting people in hu- 
man shapes, in order to teach a considerate behavior to stran- 
gers ; so an abstract regard ought to be shown to all sticks, in- 
asmuch as the irreverent spectator may not know what sort of 
staff he is encountering. If he does not take care, a man may 
beat him and "write him down an ass" with the same accom- 
plished implement ; or sit down upon it before his face, where 
there is no chair to be had ; or follow up his chastisement with 
a victorious tune on the flute. As to the ash, to which we would 
do especial honor, for the sake of our injured, yet at the same 
time polite and forgiving, Correspondent, we have the satisfac- 
tion of stating that it hath been reputed the very next wood, in 
point of utility, to the oak ; and hath been famous, time imme- 
morial, for its staffian qualities. Infinite are the spears with 
which it has supplied the warlike, the sticks it has put into the 
hands of a less sanguinary courage, the poles it has furnished 
for hops, vines, &c, and the arbors which it has run up for lov- 
ers. The Greek name for it was Melia, or the Honied ; from a 
juice or manna which it drops, and which has been much used 
in medicine and dyeing. There are, or were, about forty years 
back, when Count Ginnani wrote his History of the Ravenna 
Pine Forest, large ash woods in Tuscany, which used to be 



chap, xli.] A WORD OR TWO MORE ON STICKS. 3 

tapped for those purposes. Virgil calls it the handsomest tree 
in the forest; Chaucer, "the hardie ashe;" and Spenser, "the 
ash for nothing ill." The ground-ash flourishes the better, the 
more it is cut and slashed ; — a sort of improvement, which it 
sometimes bestows in return upon human kind. 



THE INDICATOR. [chap, xi.ii. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

The Daughter of Hippocrates 

In the time of the Norman reign in Sicily, a vessel bound from 
that island for Smyrna was driven by a westerly wind upon the 
island of Cos. The crew did not know where they were, though 
they had often visited the island ; for the trading towns lay in 
other quarters, and they saw nothing before them but woods and 
solitudes. They found however a comfortable harbor ; and the 
wind having fallen in the night, they went on shore next morn- 
ing for water. The country proved as solitary as they thought 
it ; which was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as it was very 
luxuriant, full of wild figs and grapes, with a rich uneven ground, 
and stocked with goats and other animals, who fled whenever 
they appeared. The bees were remarkably numerous ; so that 
the wild honey, fruits, and delicious water, especially one spring 
which fell into a beautiful marble basin, made them more and 
more wonder, at every step, that they could see no human in- 
habitants. 

Thus idling about and wondering, stretching themselves now 
and then among the wild thyme and grass, and now getting up 
to look at some specially fertile place which another called them 
to see, and which they thought might be turned to fine trading 
purpose, they came upon a mound covered with trees, which 
looked into a flat wide lawn of rank grass, with a house at the 
end of it. They crept nearer towards the house along the mound, 
still continuing among the trees, for fear they were trespassing 
at last upon somebody's property. It had a large garden wall 
at the back, as much covered with ivy as if it had been built of 
it. Fruit-trees looked over the wall with an unpruned thick- 
ness ; and neither at the back nor front of the house were there 
any signs of humanity. It was an ancient marble building, 
where glass was not to be expected in the windows ; but it was 
much dilapidated, and the grass grew up over the steps. They 



cbu*> xlii.] THE DAUGHTER OF HIPPOCRATES. 5 

listened again and again ; but nothing was to be heard like a 
.sound of men ; nor scarcely of anything else. There was an 
intense noonday silence. Only the hares made a rustling noise 
as they ran about the long hiding grass. The house looked like 
the tomb of human nature, amidst the vitality of earth. 

"Did you see ?" said one of the crew, turning pale, and has- 
tening to go. " See what ?'? said the others. " What looked 
out of window. " They all turned their faces towards the house, 
but saw nothing. Upon this they laughed at their companion, 
who persisted however with great earnestness, and with great 
reluctance at stopping, to say that he saw a strange hideous kind 
of face look out of window. " Let us go, Sir," said he, to the 
Captain ; — " for I tell ye what : I know this place now : and you, 
Signor Gualtier," continued he, turning to a young man, " may 
now follow that adventure I have often heard you wish to be 
engaged in. 55 The crew turned pale, and Gualtier among them. 
■" Yes," added the man, "we are fallen upon the enchanted part 
of the island of Cos, where the daughter of — Hush ! Look there !" 
They turned their faces again, and beheld the head of a large 
serpent looking out of window. Its eyes were direct upon them ; 
and stretching out of window, it lifted back its head with little 
sharp jerks like a fowl ; and so stood keenly gazing. 

The terrified sailors would have begun to depart quicklier 
than they did, had not fear itself made them move slowly. Their 
legs seemed melting from under them. Gualtier tried to rally 
his voice, "They say," said he, "'it is a gentle creature. The 
hares that feed right in front of the house are a proof of it : — let 
us all stay." The others shook their heads, and spoke in whis- 
pers, still continuing to descend the mound as well as they could . 
" There is something unnatural in that very thing," said the 
Captain : " but we will wait for you in the vessel, if you stay. 
We will, by St. Ermo." The Captain had not supposed that 
Gualtier would stay an instant; but seeing him linger more 
than the rest, he added the oath in question, and in the mean 
time was hastening with the others to get away. The truth is, 
Gualtier was, in one respect, more frightened than any of them. 
His legs were more rooted to the spot. But the same force of 
imagination that helped to detain him, enabled him to muster up 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlii. 



courage beyond those who found their will more powerful : and 
in the midst of his terror he could not help thinking what a fine 
adventure this would be to tell in Salerno, even if he did but 
conceal himself a little, and stay a few minutes longer than the 
rest. The thought, however, had hardly come upon him, when 
it was succeeded by a fear still more lively ; and he was pre- 
paring to follow the others with all the expedition he could con- 
trive, when a fierce rustling took place in the trees behind him, 
and in an instant the serpent's head was at his feet. Gualtier's 
brain as well as heart seemed to sicken, as he thought the mon- 
strous object scented him like a bear ; but despair coming in aid 
of a courage naturally fanciful and chivalrous, he bent his eyes 
more steadily, and found the huge jaws and fangs not only ab- 
staining from hurting him, but crouching and fawning at his feet 
like a spaniel. At the same time, he called to mind the old le- 
gend respecting the creature, and, corroborated as he now saw- 
it, he ejaculated with good firmness, "In the name of God and 
his saints, what art thou ?" 

"Hast thou not heard of me?" answered the serpent in a 
voice whose singular human slenderness made it seem the more 
horrible. "I guess who thou art," answered Gualtier; — "the 
fearful thing in the island of Cos." 

" I am that loathly thing," replied the serpent ; " once not 
so." And Gualtier thought that its voice trembled sorrowfully. 

The monster told Gualtier that what was said of her was true ; 
that she had been a serpent hundreds of years, feeling old age 
and renewing her youth at the end of each century ; that it was 
a curse of Diana's which had changed her ; and that she was 
never to resume a human form, till somebody was found kind 
and bold enough to kiss her on the mouth. As she spoke this 
word, she raised her crest, and sparkled so with her fiery green 
eyes, dilating at the same time the corners of her jaws, that the 
young man thrilled through his very scalp. He stept back, with 
a look of the utmost horror and loathing. The creature gave a 
sharp groan inwardly, and after rolling her neck franticly on 
the ground, withdrew a little back likewise, and seemed to be 
looking another way. Gualtier heard two or three little sounds 
as of a person weeping piteously, yet trying to subdue its voice ; 



chap, xlii.] THE DAUGHTER OF HIPPOCRATES. 7 

and looking with breathless curiosity, he saw the side of the 
loathly creature's face bathed in tears. 

" Why speakest thou, lady/' said he, " if lady thou art, of the 
curse of the false goddess Diana, who never was, or only a devil ? 
I cannot kiss thee," — and he shuddered with a horrible shudder, 
as he spoke, " but I will bless thee in the name of the true God, 
and even mark thee with his cross." 

The serpent shook her head mournfully, still keeping it turned 
round. She then faced him again, hanging her head in a dreary 
and desponding manner. " Thou knowSst not," said she, " what 
I know. Diana both was and never was ; and there are many 
other things on earth, which are and yet are not. Thou canst 
not comprehend it, even though thou art kind. But the heavens 
alter not, neither the sun nor the strength of nature ; and if thou 
wert kinder, I should be as I once was, happy and human. 
Suffice it, that nothing can change me but what I said." 

" Why wert thou changed, thou fearful and mysterious thing ?" 
said Gualtier. 

" Because I denied Diana, as thou dost," answered the ser- 
pent ; " and it was pronounced an awful crime in me, though it 
is none in thee ; and I was to be made a thing loathsome in men's 
eyes. Let me not catch thine eye, I beseech thee ; but go thy 
way and be safe ; for I feel a cruel thought coming on me, 
which will shake my innermost soul, though it shall not harm 
thee. But I could make thee suffer for the pleasure of seeing 
thine anguish ; even as some tyrants do ; and is not that dread- 
ful ?" And the monster openly shed tears, and sobbed. 

There was something in this mixture of avowed cruelty and 
weeping contradiction to it, which made Gualtier remain in spite 
of himself. But fear was still uppermost in his mind, when he 
looked upon the mouth that was to be kissed ; and he held fast 
round a tree with one hand, and his sword as fast in the other, 
watching the movements of her neck as he conversed. " How 
did thy father, the sage Hippocrates," asked he, " suffer thee to 
come to this?" "My father," replied she, "sage and good as 
he was, was but a Greek mortal ; and the great Virgin was a 
worshipped Goddess. I pray thee, go." She uttered the last 
word in a tone of loud anguish • but the very horror of it made 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlii. 



Gualtier hesitate, and he said, " How can I know that it is not 
thy destiny to deceive the merciful into this horrible kiss, that 
then and then only thou mayst devour them ?" 

But the serpent rose higher at this, and looking around loftily., 
said in a mild and majestic tone of voice, " O ye green and happy 
woods, breathing like sleep ! O safe and quiet population of these 
leafy places, dying brief deaths ! O sea ! O earth ! O heavens, 
never uttering syllable to man ! Is there no way to make better 
known the meaning of your gentle silence, of your long basking 
pleasures and brief pains ? And must the want of what is beau- 
tiful and kind from others, ever remain different from what is 
beautiful and kind in itself? And must form obscure essence; 
and human confidence in good from within, never be bolder than 
suspicion of evil from without ? O ye large-looking and grand 
benignities of creation, is it that we are atoms in a dream ; or 
that your largeness and benignity are in those only who see them, 
and that it is for us to hang over ye till we wake you into a 
voice with our kisses ? I yearn to be made beautiful by one kind 
action, and beauty itself will not believe me P 5 

Gualtier, though not a foolish youth, understood little or noth- 
ing of this mystic apostrophe ; but something made him bear in 
mind, and really inclined to believe, that it was a transformed 
woman speaking to him ; and he was making a violent internal 
effort to conquer his repugnance to the kiss, when some hares, 
starting from him as they passed, ran and cowered behind the 
folds of the monster: and she stooped her head, and licked them. 
"By Christ," exclaimed he, "whom the wormy grave gathered 
into its arms to save us from our corruptions, I will do this thing ; 
so may he have mercy on my soul, whether I live or die : for 
the very hares take refuge in her shadow." And shuddering 
and shutting his eyes, he put his mouth out for her to meet; 
and he seemed to feel, in his blindness, that dreadful mouth 
approaching ; and he made the sign of the cross ; and he mur- 
mured internally the name of him who cast seven devils out of 
Mary Magdalen, that afterwards anointed his feet ; and in the 
midst of his courageous agony, he felt a small mouth, fast and » 
warm upon his, and a hand about his neck, and another on his 
left hand ; and opening his eyes, he dropped them upon two of 



chap, ilii.] THE DAUGHTER OF HIPPOCRATUS. 9 

the sweetest that ever looked into the eye of man. — But the 
hares fled ; for they had loved the serpent, but knew not the 
beautiful human being. 

Great was the fame of Gualtier, not only throughout the Gre- 
cian islands, but on both continents ; and most of all in Sicily, 
where every one of his countrymen thought he had a hand in 
the enterprise, for being born on the same soil. The Captain 
and his crew never came again ; for, alas ! they had gone off 
without waiting as they promised. But Tancred, Prince of 
Salerno, came himself with a knightly train to see Gualtier ; 
who lived with his lady in the same place, all her past suffer- 
ings appearing as nothing to her before a month of love ; and 
even sorrowful habit had endeared it to her. Tancred, and his 
knights, and learned clerks, came in a noble ship, every oar 
having a painted scutcheon over the rowlock ; and Gualtier and 
his lady feasted them nobly, and drank to them amidst music in 
cups of Hippocras — that knightly liquor afterwards so renowned, 
w r hich she retained the secret of making from her sage father, 
whose name it bore. And when King Tancred, with a gentle 
gravity in the midst of his mirth, expressed a hope that the beau- 
tiful lady no longer worshipped Diana, Gualtier said, " No, in- 
deed, Sir;" and she looked in Gualtier's face, as she sat next 
him, with the sweetest look in the world, as who should say, 
" No, indeed : — I worship thee and thy kind heart."* 

* This story is founded on a tradition still preserved in the island of Cos, 
and repeated in old romances and books of travels. See Dunlop's History 
of Fiction, vol. ii., where he gives an account of Tirante the White. 



10 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xliii. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

The Italian Girl. 

The sun was shining beautifully one summer evening, as if 
he bade sparkling farewell to a world which he had made happy. 
It seemed also, by his looks, as if he promised to make his ap- 
pearance again to-morrow ; but there was at times a deep 
breathing western wind, and dark purple clouds came up here 
and there, like gorgeous waiters at a funeral. The children in 
a village not far from the metropolis were playing however on 
the green, content with the brightness of the moment, when they 
saw a female approaching, who gathered them about her by the 
singularity of her dress. It was not a very remarkable dress ; 
but any difference from the usual apparel of their country-wo- 
men appeared so to them ; and crying out, " A French girl ! A 
French girl !" they ran up to her, and stood looking and talking. 
The stranger seated herself upon a bench that was fixed be- 
tween two elms, and for a moment leaned her head against one 
of them, as if faint with walking. But she raised it speedily, 
and smiled with complacency on the rude urchins. She had a 
boddice and petticoat on of different colors, and a handkerchief 
tied neatly about her head with the point behind. On her hands 
were gloves without fingers ; and she wore about her neck a 
guitar, upon the strings of which one of her hands rested. The 
children thought her very handsome. Anybody else would also 
have thought her very ill ; but they saw nothing before them but 
a good-natured looking foreigner and a guitar, and they asked 
her to play. " O clie lei ragazzi !" said she, in a soft and al- 
most inaudible voice • " Che visi lieti !"* and she began to play. 
She tried to sing too, but her voice failed her, and she shook her 
head smilingly, saying " Stanca ! stanca /"j" " Sing — do sing," 

* Oh what fine boys ! What happy faces ! 
f Weary ! Weary ! 



chap, xliii.] , THE ITALIAN GIRL. 11 

said the children ; and nodding her head, she was trying to do 
so, when a set of boys came up and joined in the request. " No, 
no," said one of the elder boys, " she is not well. You are ill, 
a'nt you, — Miss !" added he, laying his hand upon hers as if to 
hinder it. He drew out the last word somewhat doubtfully, for 
her appearance perplexed him ; he scarcely knew whether to 
take her for a strolling musician or a lady strayed from a sick 
bed. " Grazie f" said she, understanding his look : — " troppo 
stanca : troppo.*" 

By this time the usher came up, and addressed her in French ; 
but she only understood a word here and there. He then spoke 
Latin, and she repeated one or two of his words, as if they w*ere 
familiar to her. 

"She is an Italian!" said he, looking round with a good-na- 
tured importance ; " for the Italian is but a bastard of the Latin.' 3 
The children looked with the more wonder, thinking he was 
speaking of the fair musician. 

" Non dubito" continued the usher, " quin tu lectitas poetam 
ilium celeberrimum Tassonem ; f Taxam, I should say properly, 
but the departure from the Italian name is considerable." The 
stranger did not understand a word. 

"I speak of Tasso," said the usher, — "of Tasso." 

" Tasso ! Tasso!" repeated the fair minstrel ; " oh — conosco 
— il Tas-so ;"% and she hung with an accent of beautiful lan- 
guor upon the first syllable. 

"Yes," returned the worthy scholar, "doubtless your accent 
may be better. Then of course you know those classical 
lines — 

Intanto Erminia infra 1' ombros?/ pianty 
D' antic a selva dal cavallo — what is it ?" 

The stranger repeated these words in a tone of fondness, like 
those of an old friend : — 

Intanto Erminia infra 1' ombrose piante 
D' antica selva dal cavallo e scorta ; 

* Thanks : — too weary ! too weary ! 

f Doubtless you read that celebrated po.et Tasso. 

t Oh — I know — Tasso. 



12 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xliii. 

Ne piu governo il fren la man tremante, 
E mezza quasi par, tra viva e morta.* 

Our usher's common-place book had supplied him with a for- 
tunate passage, for it was a favorite one of her country-women. 
It also singularly applied to her situation. There was a sort of 
exquisite mixture of clearness in her utterance of these verses, 
which gave some of the children a better idea of French than 
they had had ; for they could not get it out of their heads that 
she must be a French girl : — " Italian French, perhaps," said 
one of them. But her voice trembled as she went on, like the 
hand she spoke of. 

^ I have heard my poor cousin Montague sing those very 
lines," said the boy who prevented her from playing. 

" Montague," repeated the stranger very plainly, but turning 
paler and fainter. She put one of her hands in turn upon the 
boy's affectionately, and pointed towards the spot where the 
church was. 

" Yes, yes," cried the boy ; — " why, she knew my cousin : — 
she must have known him in Florence." 

" I told you," said the usher, "she was an Italian." 

" Help her to my aunt's," continued the youth, " she'll 
understand her: — lean upon me, Miss ;" and he repeated the 
last word without his former hesitation. 

Only a few boys followed her to the door, the rest having been 
awed away by the usher. As soon as the stranger entered the 
house and saw an elderly lady who received her kindly, she 
exclaimed " La Signora Madre," and fell in a swoon at 
her feet. 

She was taken to bed, and attended with the utmost care by 
her hostess, who would not suffer her to talk till she had had a 
sleep. She merely heard enough to find out, that the stranger 
had known her son in Italy ; and she was thrown into a painful 
state of suspicion by the poor girl's eyes, which followed her 
about the room till the lady fairly came up and closed them. 

* Meantime in the old wood, the palfrey bore 
Erminia deeper into shade and shade ; 
Her trembling hands could hold him in no more, 
. And she appeared betwixt alive and dead. 



chap, xliii.] THE ITALIAN GIRL. 13 

" Obedient ! obedient ! 55 said the patient : " obedient in every- 
thing : only the Signora will let me kiss her hand ;" and taking 
it with her own trembling one, she laid her cheek upon it, and 
it stayed there till she had dropt asleep for weariness. 

Silken rest 



Tie all thy cares up ! 

thought her kind watcher, who was doubly thrown upon a recol- 
lection of that beautiful passage in Beaumont and Fletcher, by 
the suspicion she had of the cause of the girl's visit. " And 
yet," thought she, turning her eyes, with a thin tear in them, 
towards the church spire, " he was an excellent boy, — the boy 
of my heart. 55 

When the stranger woke, the secret was explained : and if the 
mind of her hostess was relieved, it was only the more touched 
with pity, and indeed moved with respect and admiration. The 
dying girl (for she evidently was dying, and happy at the thought 
of it) was the niece of an humble tradesman in Florence, at 
whose house young Montague, who was a gentleman of small 
fortune, had lodged and fallen sick during his travels. She was 
a lively, good-natured girl, whom he used to hear coquetting and 
playing the guitar with her neighbors ; and it was greatly on 
this account, that her considerate and hushing gravity struck 
him whenever she entered his room. One day he heard no 
more coquetting, nor even the guitar. He asked the reason, 
when she came to give him some drink ; and she said she had 
heard him mention some noise that disturbed him. 

" But you do not call your voice and your music a noise, 55 said 
he, " do you, Rosaura ? I hope not, for I had expected it would 
give me strength to get rid of this fever and reach home. 55 

Rosaura turned pale, and let the patient into a secret ; but 
what surprised and delighted him was, that she played her 
guitar nearly as often as before, and sang, too, only less 
sprightly airs. 

" You get better and better, Signor, 55 said she, " every day, 
and your mother will see you and be happy. I hope you will 
tell her what a good doctor you had. 55 



14 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xliii 

" The best in the world/' cried he ; and, as he sat up in bed, 
he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. 

" Pardon me, Signora," said the poor girl to her hostess ; 
" but I felt that arm round my waist for a week after : ay, almost 
as much as if it had been there." 

" And Charles felt that you did," thought his mother ; " for he 
never told me the story." 

" He begged my pardon," continued she, " as I was hastening 
out of the room, and hoped I should not construe his warmth 
into impertinence. And to hear him talk so tome, who used to 
fear what he might think of myself; it made me stand in the 
passage, and lean my head against the wall, and weep such bitter, 
and yet such sweet tears ! — But he did not hear them. No, 
Madam, he did not know, indeed, how much I — how much I — " 

" Loved him, child," interrupted Mrs. Montague ; " you have 
a right to say so, and I wish he had been alive to say as much 
to you himself." 

" Oh, good God !" said the dying girl, her tears flowing away, 
" this is too great a happiness for me, to hear his own mother 
talking so." And again she lays her weak head upon the lady's 
hand. 

The latter would have persuaded her to sleep again ; but she 
said she could not sleep for joy : " for I'll tell you, Madam," 
continued she, " I do not believe you will think it foolish, for 
something very grave at my heart tells me it is not so ; but I 
have had a long thought " (and her voice and look grew more 
exalted as she spoke), " which has supported me through much 
toil and many disagreeable things, to this country and this place ; 
and I will tell you what it is, and how it came to my mind. I 
received this letter from your son." 

Here she drew out a paper which, though carefully wrapped 
up in several others, was much worn at the sides. It was dated 
from the village, and ran thus : — 

" 6 This comes from the Englishman whom Rosaura nursed so 
kindly at Florence. She will be sorry to hear that her kindness 
was in vain, for he is dying ; and he sometimes fears that her 
sorrow will be greater than he could wish it to be. But marry 
one of your kind countrymen, my good girl ; for all must love 



chap, xliii.] THE ITALIAN GIRL. 15 

Rosaura who know her. If it shall be my lot ever to meet her 
in heaven, I will thank her as a blessed tongue only can. 5 

" As soon as I read this letter, Madam," continues Rosaura, 
"and what he had said about heaven, it flashed into my head, 
that, though I did not deserve him on earth, I might, perhaps, by 
trying and patience, deserve to be joined with him in heaven, 
where there is no distinction of persons. My uncle was pleased 
to see me become a religious pilgrim ; but he knew as little of 
the world as I, and I found that I could earn my way to England 
better, and quite as religiously, by playing my guitar, which was 
also more independent ; and I had often heard your son talk of 
independence and freedom, and commend me for doing what he 
was pleased to call so much kindness to others. So I played my 
guitar from Florence all the way to England, and all that I 
earned by it I gave away to the poor, keeping enough to procure 
me lodging. I lived on bread and water, and used to weep 
happy tears over it, because I looked up to heaven, and thought 
he might see me. I have sometimes, though not often, met with 
small insults ; but if ever they threatened to grow greater, I 
begged the people to desist, in the kindest way I could, even 
smiling, and saying I would please them if I had the heart ; 
which might be wrong, but it seemed as if deep thoughts told 
me to say so ; and they used to look astonished, and left off; 
which made me the more hope that St. Philip and the Holy 
Virgin did not think ill of my endeavors. So playing, and 
giving alms, in this manner, I arrived in the neighborhood of 
your beloved village, where I fell sick for a while, and was very 
kindly treated in an out-house ; though the people, I thought, seem- 
ed to look strange and afraid on this crucifix — (though your son 
never did), — though he taught me to think kindly of everybody, 
and hope the best, and leave everything, except our own endeavors, 
to Heaven. I fell sick, Madam, because I found for certain that the 
Signor Montague was dead, albeit I had no hope that he was alive." 

She stopped awhile for breath, for she was growing weaker 
and weaker, and her hostess would fain have had her keep 
silence ; but she pressed her hand, as well as she might, and 
prayed with such a patient panting of voice to be allowed to 
go on, that she was. She smiled thankfully and resumed : — 



16 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xli. 

" So when — so when I got my strength a little again, I walked 
on and came to the beloved village, and I saw the beautiful white 
church spire in the trees ; and I then knew where his body slept. 
and I thought some kind person would help me to die, with my 
face looking towards the church, as it now does ; and death is 
upon me, even now : but lift me a little higher on the pillows, 
dear lady, that I may see the green ground of the hill." 

She was raised up as she wished, and after looking awhile, 
with a placid feebleness, at the hill, said in a very low voice, 
" Say one prayer for me, dear lady ; and if it be not too proud 
in me, call me in it your daughter. 55 

The mother of her beloved summoned up a grave and earnest 
voice, as well as she might, and knelt and said, " O Heavenly 
Father of us all, who in the midst of thy manifold and merciful 
bounties bringest us into strong passes of anguish, which never- 
theless thou enablest us to go through, look down, we beseech 
thee, upon this thy young and innocent servant, the daughter — 
that might have been — of my heart, and enable her spirit to pass 
through the struggling bonds of mortality, and be gathered into 
thy rest, with those we love. Do, dear and great God, of 
thy infinite mercy, for we are poor weak creatures, both young 
and old — 55 here her voice melted away into a breathing tearful- 
ness ; and after remaining on her knees a moment longer, she 
rose and looked upon the bed, and saw that the weary smiling 
one was no more. 



.JHAP XLIV.] A "NOW." 17 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

" A Now." — Descriptive of a Hot Day. 

Now the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her 
saffron house, calls up the moist vapors to surround her, and 
goes veiled with them as long as she can ; till Phoebus, coming 
forth in his power, looks everything out of the sky, and holds 
sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the 
mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and re- 
sorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-topof his load 
of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out with 
eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of 
one side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother's 
cottage-door watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held 
up over her sunny forehead. Now laborers look well resting in 
their white shirts at the doors of rural ale-houses. Now an elm 
is fine there, with a seat under it ;. and horses drink out of the 
trough, stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars ; 
and the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without 
one for more than ten minutes ; and his horse stands wincing at 
the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to and fro 
his ineffectual docked tail ; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the 
host's daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and 
ear-rings, carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foam- 
ins glass, for which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives 
with an indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful two- 
pence. Now grasshoppers " fry," as Dry den says. Now cat- 
tle stand in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots, and 
shoes, and trees by the road-side, are thick with dust ; and dogs, 
rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have 
been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the 
legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three 
3 



18 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xliv. 

miles farther to go in a pair of tight shoes, is in a pretty situa- 
tion. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intolerable ; 
and the apothecary's apprentice, with a bitterness beyond aloes, 
thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now men with 
powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpow- 
dered, and stop to wipe thern up hill, with countenances that 
seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round 
the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a for- 
bidden splash and get wet through the shoes. Now also they 
make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and 
ponds, and make mighty fishings for " tittlebats." Now the bee, 
as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now 
doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand ; and a walled 
lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a 
thing not to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, 
thick-set with hedge-row elms, and having the noise of a brook 
" rumbling in pebble-stone," is one of the pleasantest things in 
the world. 

Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another, in 
rooms, in door-ways, and out of window, always beginning the 
conversation with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now 
blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, and flannel waist- 
coats left off, and cold meat preferred to hot, and wonder ex- 
pressed why tea continues so refreshing, and people delight to 
sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices water door- ways with tin 
canisters that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, 
jumbling along the middle of the street, and jolting the showers 
out of its box of water, really does something. Now fruiterers' 
shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only things to 
those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths ; and peo- 
ple make presents of flowers ; and wine is put into ice ; and the 
after-dinner lounger recreates his head with applications of per- 
fumed water out of long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who 
cannot resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn him. 
Now buck-skins are not the lawn of Cos. Now jockeys, walk- 
ing in great-coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat 
people in a stage coach hate the sixth fat one who is coming in, 
and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks in office 



chap. xliv.J A "NOW." 19 

do nothing but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the 
newspaper. Now the old-clothesman drops his solitary cry 
more deeply into the areas on the hot and forsaken side of the 
street ; and bakers look vicious ; and cooks are aggravated : 
and the steam of a tavern-kitchen catches hold of us like the 
breath of Tartarus. Now delicate skins are beset with gnats ; 
and boys make their sleeping companion start up, with playing a 
burning-glass on his hand ; ' and blacksmiths are super-carbonat- 
ed ; and cobblers in their stalls almost feel a wish to be trans- 
planted ; and butter is too easy to spread ; and the dragoons 
wonder whether the Romans liked their helmets ; and old ladies, 
with their lappets unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation ; 
and the servant maids are afraid they look vulgarly hot ; and 
the author, who has a plate of strawberries brought him, finds 
that he has come to the end of his writing. 

We cannot conclude this article, however, without returning 
thanks, both on our own account and on that of our numerous 
predecessors, who have left so large a debt of gratitude unpaid, 
to this very useful and ready monosyllable — "Now." We are 
sure that there is not a didactic poet, ancient or modern, who, if 
he possessed a decent share of candor, would not be happy to 
own his obligations to that masterly conjunction, which pos- 
sesses the very essence of wit, for it has the art of bringing the 
most remote things together. And its generosity is in proportion 
to its wit, for it always is most profuse of its aid where it is most 
wanted. 

We must enjoy a pleasant passage with the reader on the sub- 
ject of this " eternal Now " in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of 
the Woman-Hater. — Upon turning to it, we perceive that our 
illustrious particle does not make quite so great a figure as we 
imagined ; but the whole passage is in so analogous a taste, and 
affords such an agreeable specimen of the wit and humor with 
which fine poets could rally the common-places of their art, that 
we cannot help proceeding with it. Lazarello, a foolish table- 
hunter, has requested an introduction to the Duke of Milan, who 
has had a fine lamprey presented him. Before the introduction 
takes place, he finds that the Duke has given the fish away ; so 
that his wish to be known to him goes with it ; and part of the 



20 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlit. 

drollery of the passage arises from his uneasiness at being de- 
tained by the consequences of his own request, and his fear lest 
he should be too late for the lamprey elsewhere. 

Count [aside to the Duke). Let me entreat your Grace to stay 
a little, 
To know a gentleman, to whom yourself 
Is much beholding. He hath made the sport 
For your whole court these eight years, on my knowledge. 

Duke. His name ? 

Count. Lazarello. 

Duke. I heard of him this morning : — which is he ? 

Count (aside to Laz). Lazarello, pluck up thy spirits. Thy 
fortune is now raising. The Duke calls for thee, and thou shalt 
be acquainted with him. 

Laz. He's going away, and I must of necessity stay here upon 
business. 

Count. "Tis all one : thou shalt know him first. 

Laz. Stay a little. If he should offer to take me with him, 
and by that means I should lose that which I seek for ! But if 
he should, I will not go with him. 

Count. Lazarello, the Duke stays. Wilt thou lose this op- 
portunity ? 

Laz. How must I speak to him ? 

Count. 'Twas well thought off. You must not talk to him as 
you do to an ordinary man, honest plain sense ; but you must 
wind about him. For example, if he should ask you what 
o'clock it is, you must not say, " If it please your Grace, 'tis 
nine ;" — but thus ; — " Thrice three o'clock, so please my Sove- 
reign — or thus : — 

" Look how many Muses there do dwell 
Upon the sweet banks of the learned well, 
And just so many strokes the clock hath struck ;" 
and so forth. And you must now and then enter into a descrip- 
tion. 

Laz. I hope I shall do it. 

Count. Come. — May it please your Grace to take note of a 
gentleman, well seen, deeply read, and thoroughly grounded in 
the hidden knowledge of all sallets and pot-herbs whatsoever. 



chap, xliv.] A " NOW." 21 

Duke. I shall desire to know him more inwardly. 

Laz. I kiss the ox-hide of your Grace's foot. 

Count (aside to Laz.). Very well. — Will your Grace question 
him a little ? 

Duke. How old are you ? 

Laz. Full eight-and-twenty several almanacks 
Have been compiled, all for several years, 
Since first I drew this breath. Four 'prenticeships 
Have I most truly served in this world : 
And eight-and-twenty times hath Phoebus 5 car 
Run out his yearly course, since 

Duke. I understand you, Sir. 

Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks ! 

Duke. You are eisfht-and-twentv years old ? 
What time of the day do you hold it to be ? 

Laz. About the time that mortals whet their knives 
On thresholds, on their shoe-soles, and on stairs. 
Now bread is grating, and the testy cook 
Hath much to do now ; now the tables all 

Duke. 'Tis almost dinner-time ? 

Laz. Your Grace doth apprehend me very rightly. 



22 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlv. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

The Honorable Mr. Boyle. 

The celebrated Robert Boyle, the chemist, was accounted in 
his days a sort of perfection of a man, especially in all respects 
intellectual, moral, and religious. This excellent person was in 
the habit of moralizing upon everything that he did or suffered ; 
such as, " Upon his manner of giving meat to his dog," — " Upon 
his horse stumbling in a very fair way/' — " Upon his sitting at 
ease in a coach that went very fast/' &c. Among other Reflec- 
tions, is one " Upon a fish's struggling after having swallowed 
the hook." It amounts to this : that at the moment when the 
fish thinks himself about to be most happy, the hook " does so 
wound and tear his tender gills, and thereby puts him into 
such restless pain, that, no doubt, he wishes the hook, bait and 
all, were out of his torn jaws again. Thus/' says he, " men who 
do what they should not, to obtain any sensual desires," &c, &c. 
Not a thought comes over him as to his own part in the business, 
and what he ought to say of himself for tearing the jaws and 
gills to indulge his own appetite for excitement. Take also the 
following : — •" Fifth Section — Reflection I. Killing a crow (out 
of window) in a hog's trough, and immediately tracing the 
ensuing reflection with a pen made of one of his quills. — Long 
and patiently did I wait for this unlucky crow, wallowing in 
the sluttish trough (whose sides kept him a great while out of 
the reach of my gun), and gorging himself with no less greedi- 
ness than the very swinish proprietaries of the feast, till at 
length, my no less unexpected than fatal shot in a moment struck 
him down ; and turning the scene of his delight into that of his 
pangs, made him abruptly alter his note, and change his trium- 
phant chaunt into a dismal and tragic noise. This method is 
not unusual to divine justice towards brawny and incorrigible 
sinners," &c, &c. Thus the crow, for eating his dinner, is a 
rascal worthy to be shot by the Honorable Mr. Robert Boyle, 



chap, xlvi.] THE HONORABLE MR. BOYLE. 23 

before the latter sits down to his own ; while the said Mr. Boyle, 
instead of contenting himself with being a gentleman in search 
of amusement at the expense of birds and fish, is a representa- 
tive of Divine Justice. 

We laugh at this wretched moral pedantry now, and deplore 
the involuntary hard-heartedness which such mistakes in religion 
tended to produce ; but in how many respects should it not make 
us look about ourselves, and see where we fall short of an en- 
largement of thinking ? 



24 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xlvi 



CHAPTER XLVL 

Superfine Breeding. 

There is an anecdote in Aulus Gellius (Nodes Atticce, lib. 10, 
cap. vi.) which exhibits, we think, one of the highest instances 
of what may be called polite blackguardism, that we remember 
to have read. The fastidiousness, self-will, and infinite resent- 
ment against a multitude of one's fellow-creatures for presuming 
to come in contact with our importance, are truly edifying ; and 
to complete the lesson, this extraordinary specimen of the effect 
of superfine breeding and blood is handed down to us in 
the person ^of a lady. Her words might be thought to have 
been a bad joke ; and bad enough it would have been ; but the 
sense that was shown of them proves them to have been very 
gravely regarded. 

Claudia, the daughter of Appius Csecus, in coming away from 
a public spectacle, was much pressed and pushed about by the 
crowd ; upon which she thus vented her impatience : — " What 
should I have suffered now, and how much more should I have 
been squeezed and knocked aboutj if my brother Publius Clau- 
dius had not had his ships destroyed in battle, with all that heap 
of men 1 I should have been absolutely jammed to death I 
Would to heaven my brother were alive again, and could go with 
another fleet to Sicily, and be the death of this host of people, 
who plague and pester one in this horrid manner !" * 

For these words, " so wicked and so uncivic," says good old 
Gellius (tarn improba ac tarn incivilia) the iEdiles, Caius Fun- 

* " Quid me nunc factum esset, quantoque arctius pressiusque conflictata 
essem, si P. Claudius frater meus navali pra^lio classem navium cum ingen- 
ti civium numero non perdidisset ? certe quidem majore nunc copia populi 
oppressa intercidissem. Sed utinam, inquit, reviviscat frater, aliamque 
classem in Siciliam ducat, atque istam multitudinem eat, quee me male 
nunc miseram convexavit." 



chap, xlvi.] . SUPERFINE BREEDING. 25 

danus and Tiberius Sempronius, got the lady fined in the sum of 
twenty-five thousand pounds brass. There is a long account, 
in Livy, of the speech which they made to the people in reply 
to the noble families that interceded for her. It is very indig- 
nant. Claudia herself confessed her words, and does not ap- 
pear to have joined in the intercession. They are not related at 
such length by Livy, as by Aulus Gellius. He merely .makes 
her wish that her brother were alive to take out another fleet. 
But he shows his sense of the ebullition by calling it a dreadful 
imprecation ; and her rage was even more gratuitous, according 
to his account ; for he describes her as coming from the shows in 
a chariot. 

Insolence and want of feeling appear to have been hereditary 
in this Appian family : which gives us also a strong sense of 
their want of capacity ; otherwise a disgust at such manners 
mist have been generated in some of the children. They were 
^famous for opposing every popular law, and for having kept the 
commons as long as possible out of any share in public honors and 
government. The villain Appius Claudius, whose story has been 
made still more familiar to the public by the tragedy of Mr. 
Knowles, was among its ancestors. Appius Csecus, or the Blind, 
the father of Claudia, though he constructed the celebrated Ap- 
pian Way and otherwise benefited the city, was a very unpo- 
pular man, wilful, haughty, and lawless. He retained posses- 
sion of the Censorship beyond the limited period. It is an in- 
stance perhaps of his unpopularity, as well as of the supersti- 
tion of the times, that having made a change in one of the priestly 
offices, and become blind some years afterwards, the Romans at- 
tributed it to the vengeance of heaven ; an opinion which Livy 
repeats with great devotion, calling it a warning against inno- 
vations in religion. It had no effect, however, upon Claudius 
the brother, whose rashness furnished the pious Romans with a 
similar example to point at. Before an engagement with the 
Carthaginians, the Sacred Chickens were consulted, and because 
they would not peck and furnish him with a good omen, he or- 
dered thern to be thrown into the sea. "If they won't eat," 
says he, "let 'em drink." The engagement was one of the 
worst planned and the worst fought in the world ; but the men 



26 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlvi. 

were dispirited by the Consul's irreverent behavior to the chick- 
ens ; and his impiety shared the disgrace with his folly. Livy 
represents him as an epitome of all that was bad in his family; 
proud, stubborn, unmerciful, though full of faults himself, and 
wilful and precipitate to a degree of madness. This was the 
battle, of which his sister wished to see a repetition. It cost the 
Romans many ships sunk, ninety-three taken, and according to 
the historian, the miraculous loss of eight thousand men killed 
and twenty thousand taken prisoners, while the Carthaginians 
lost not a ship or a man. 



chap, xlvii.] SHAKING HANDS. 27 



CHAPTER XLVII. 

Shaking Hands. 

Among the first things which we remember noticing in the man- 
ners of people, were two errors in the custom of shaking hands. 
Some we observed, grasped everybody's hand alike, — with an 
equal fervor of grip. You would have thought that Jenkins was 
the best friend they had in the world ; but on succeeding to the 
squeeze, though a slight acquaintance, you found it equally flat- 
tering to yourself; and on the appearance of somebody else 
(whose name, it turned out, the operator had forgotten), the crush 
was no less complimentary : — the face was as earnest, and 
beaming the li glad to see you" as syllabical and sincere, and 
the shake as close, as long, and as rejoicing, as if the semi-un- 
known was a friend come home from the Deserts. 

On the other hand, there would be a gentleman, now and then, 
as coy of his hand, as if he were a prude, or had a whitlow. It 
was in vain that your pretensions did not go beyond the " civil 
salute " of the ordinary shake ; or that being introduced to him 
in a friendly manner, and expected to shake hands with the rest 
of the company, you could not in decency omit his. His fingers, 
half coming out and half retreating, seemed to think that you 
were going to do them a mischief; and when you got hold of 
them, the whole shake was on your side ; the other hand did but 
proudly or pensively acquiesce — there was no knowing which ; 
you had to sustain it, as you might a lady's, in handing her to a 
seat ; and it was an equal perplexity to know whether to shake 
or to let it go. The one seemed a violence done to the patient, 
the other an awkward responsibility brought upon yourself. You 
did not know, all the evening, whether you were not an object of 
dislike to the person ; till, on the party's breaking up, you saw 
him behave like an equally ill-used gentleman to all who prac- 
tised the same unthinking civility. 



28 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xlvit. 

Both these errors, we think, might as well be avoided ; but, of 
the two, we must say we prefer the former. If it does not look 
so much like particular sincerity, it looks more like general 
kindness ; and if those two virtues are to be separated (which 
they assuredly need not be, if considered without spleen), the 
world can better afford to dispense with an unpleasant truth than 
a gratuitous humanity. Besides, it is more difficult to make 
sure of the one than to practise the other, and kindness itself is 
the best of all truths. As long as we are sure of that, we are 
sure of something, and of something pleasant. It is always the 
best end, if not in every instance the most logical means. 

This manual shyness is sometimes attributed to modesty, but 
never, we suspect, with justice, unless it be that sort of modesty 
whose fear of committing itself is grounded in pride. Want of 
address is a better reason ; but this particular instance of it 
would be grounded in the same feeling. It always implies a 
habit either of pride or mistrust. We have met with two really 
kind men who evinced this soreness of hand. Neither of them, 
perhaps, thought himself inferior to anybody about him, and both 
had good reason to think highly of themselves, but both had been 
sanguine men, contradicted in their early hopes. There was a 
plot to meet the hand of one of them with a fish-slice, in order 
to show him the disadvantage to which he put his friends by 
that flat mode of salutation ; but the conspirator had not the 
courage to do it. Whether he heard of the intention we know 
not, but shortly afterwards he took very kindly to a shake. The 
other* was the only man of a warm set of politicians, who re- 
mained true to his first hopes of mankind. He was impatient 
at the change in his companions, and at the folly and inattention 
of the rest ; but though his manner became cold, his consistency 
remained warm, and this gave him a right to be as strange as 
he pleased. 

'*The late Mr. Hazlitt 



chap, xlviii.] ON RECEIVING A SPIIIG OF LAUREL. 20 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

On receiving a Sprig of Laurel from Vaucluse. 

And this piece of laurel is from Vaucluse ! Perhaps Petrarch, 
perhaps Laura sat under it ! This is a true present. What an 
exquisite, dry, old, vital, young-looking, everlasting twig it is ! 
It has been plucked nine months, and yet looks as hale and as 
crisp as if it would last ninety years. It shall last, at any rate, 
as long as its owner, and longer, if care and love can preserve 
it. How beautifully it is turned ! It was a happy pull from 
the tree. Its shape is the very line of beauty ; it has berries 
upon it, as if resolved to show us in what fine condition the 
trees are ; while the leaves issue from it, and swerve upwards 
with their elegant points, as though they had come from adorn- 
ing the poet's head. Be thou among the best of one's keepsakes, 
thou gentle stem, in deliciis nostris ; and may the very maid- 
servant, who wonders to see thy withered beauty in its frame, 
miss her lover the next five weeks, for not having the instinct to 
know that thou must have something to do with love ! 

Perhaps Petrarch has felt the old ancestral bough of this 
branch stretching over his head, and whispering to him of the 
name of Laura, of his love, and of their future glory ; for all 
these ideas used to be entwined in one. (Sestina 2, canzone 17, 
sonetti 162, 163, 164, 207, 224, &c.) Perhaps it is of the very 
stock of that bough, which he describes as supplying his mis- 
tress with a leaning-stock, when she sat in her favorite bower. 

Giovane donna sotto un verde lauro 
Vidi piu bianca e piu fredda che neve 
Non percossa dal sol mclti e molt' anni ; 
E '1 suo parlar, e '1 bel viso, e le chiome, 
Mi piacquer si, ch' i' l'ho a gli occhi miei, 
Ed avro sempre, ov' io sia in poggio o'n riva. 

Part 3., sestina % 



30 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xlviii. 



A youthful lady under a green laurel 
I saw, more fair and colder than white snows 
VeiPd from the sun for many and many a year : 
And her sweet face, and hair, and way of speaking, 
So pleased me, that I have her now before me, 
And shall have ever, whether on hill or lea. 

The laurel seems more appropriate to Petrarch than to any 
0:her poet. He delighted to sit under its leaves ; he loved it both for 
itself and for the resemblance of its name to that of his mistress; 
he wrote of it continually, and he was called from out of its 
shade to be crowned with it in the capitol. It is a remarkable 
instance of the fondness with which he cherished the united idea 
of Laura and the laurel, that he confesses this fancy to have been 
one of the greatest delights he experienced in receiving the 
crown upon his head. 

It was out of Vaucluse that he was called. Vaucluse, Val- 
chiusa, the Shut Valley (from which the French, in the modern 
enthusiasm for intellect, gave the name to the department in 
which it lies), is a remarkable spot in the old poetical region of 
Provence, consisting of a little deep glen of green meadows, sur- 
rounded with rocks, and containing the fountain of the river 
Sorgue. Petrarch, when a boy of eight or nine years of age, 
had been struck with its beauty, and exclaimed that it was the 
place of all others he should like to live in, better than the most 
splendid cities. He resided there afterwards for several years, 
and composed in it the greater part of his poems. Indeed, he 
says in his account of himself, that he either wrote or conceived, 
in that valley, almost every work he produced. He lived in a 
little cottage, with a small homestead, on the banks of the river. 
Here he thought to forget his passion for Laura, and here he 
found it stronger than ever. We do not well see how it could 
have been otherwise ; for Laura lived no great way off, at 
Chabrieres, and he appears to have seen her often in the very 
place. He paced along the river; he sat under the trees; 
he climbed the mountains; but Love, he says, was ever by 
his side, 

Ragionando con meco, ed io con lui. 

He holding talk with me, and I with him. 



chap, xlviii.] ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF LAUREL 31 

— « 

We are supposing that all our readers are acquainted with 
Petrarch. Many of them doubtless know him intimately. Should 
any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak 
of him in the gross ? We should say that he was one of the 
finest gentlemen and greatest scholars that ever lived ; that he 
was a writer who flourished in Italy in the 14th century, at the 
time when Chaucer was young, during the reigns of our Ed- 
wards ; that he was the greatest light of his age ; that, although 
so fine a writer himself, and the author of a multitude of works, 
or rather because he was both, he took the greatest pains to 
revive the knowledge of the ancient learning, recommending it 
everywhere, and copying out large manuscripts with his own 
hand ; that two great cities, Paris and Rome, contended which 
should have the honor of crowning him ; that he was crowned 
publicly, in the metropolis of the world, with laurel and with 
myrtle ; that he was the friend of Boccaccio, the Father of 
Italian Prose ; and lastly, that his greatest renown nevertheless, 
as well as the predominant feelings of his existence, arose from 
the long love he bore for a lady of Avignon, the far-famed Laura, 
whom he fell in love with on the 6th of April, 1327, on a Good 
Friday ; whom he rendered illustrious in a multitude of sonnets, 
which have left a sweet sound and sentiment in the ear of all 
after lovers ; and who died, still passionately beloved, in the year 
1348, on the same day and hour on which he first beheld her. 
Who she was, or why their connexion was not closer, remains 
a mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of 
her staid manners, she did not show an altogether insensible 
countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted ima- 
gination, from his own repeated accounts — from all that he wrote, 
uttered and thought. One love, and one poet, sufficed to give 
the whole civilized world a sense of delicacy in desire, of the 
abundant riches to be found in one single idea, and of the going 
out of a man's self to dwell in the soul and happiness of another, 
which has served to refine the passion for all modern times ; and 
perhaps will do so, as long as love renews the world. 



32 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 



CHAPTER XL1X. 

Coaches. 

According to the opinion commonly entertained respecting an 
author's want of riches, it may be allowed us to say, that we 
retain from childhood a considerable notion of a '* ride in a 
coach." Nor do we hesitate to confess, that by coach, we espe- 
cially mean a hired one ; from the equivocal dignity of the post- 
chaise down to that despised old castaway, the hackney. 

It is true, that the carriage, as it is indifferently called (as if 
nothing less genteel could carry any one), is a more decided thing 
than the chaise ; it may be swifter even than the mail, leaves 
the stage at a still greater distance in every respect, and (forget- 
ting what it may come to itself) darts by the poor old lumbering 
hackney with immeasurable contempt. It rolls with a prouder 
ease than any other vehicle. It is full of cushions and comfort ; 
elegantly colored inside and out ; rich, yet neat ; light and rapid, 
yet substantial. The horses seem proud to draw it. The fat and 
fair-wigged coachman " lends his sounding lash," his arm only 
in action and that but little, his body well set with its own weight. 
The footman, in the pride of his nonchalance, holding by the 
straps behind, and glancing down sideways betwixt his cocked 
hat and neckcloth, stands swinging from east to west upon his 
springy toes. The horses rush along amidst their glancing har- 
ness. Spotted dogs leap about them, barking with a princely 
superfluity of noise. The hammer-cloth trembles through all its 
fringe. The paint flashes in the sun. We, contemptuous of 
everything less convenient, bow backwards and forwards with a 
certain indifferent air of gentility, infinitely predominant. Sud- 
denly, with a happy mixture of turbulence and truth, the carriage 
dashes up by the curb-stone to the very point desired, and stops 
with a lordly wilfulness of decision. The coachman looks as if 
nothing aad happened. The footman is down in an instant ; the 
knocker reverberates into the farthest corner of the house ; doors, 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 33 

both carriage and house, are open ; — we descend, casting a mat- 
ter-of-course eye at the bystanders ; and the moment we touch 
the pavement, the vehicle, as if conscious of what it has carried, 
and relieved from the weight of our importance, recovers from its 
sidelong inclination with a jerk, tossing and panting, as it were, 
for very breath, like the proud heads of the horses. 

All this, it must be owned, is very pretty ; but it is also gouty 
and superfluous. It is too convenient,— too exacting, — too exclu- 
sive. We must get too much for it, and lose too much by it. Its 
plenty, as Ovid says, makes us poor. We neither have it in the 
republic of letters, nor would desire it in any less Jacobinical 
state. Horses, as many as you please, provided men have 
enough to eat ; — hired coaches, a reasonable number : — but 
health and good-humor at all events. 

Gigs and curricles are things less objectionable, because they 
cannot be so relied upon as substitutes for exercise. Our taste in 
them, we must confess, is not genuine. How shall we own it ? 
We like to be driven, instead of drive ;— to read or look about 
us, instead of keeping watch on a horse's head. We have no 
relish even for vehicles of this description that are not safe. 
Danger is a good thing for giving a fillip to a man's ideas ; but 
even danger, to us, must come recommended by something use- 
ful. We have no ambition to have Tandem written on our 
tomb-stone. 

The prettiest of these vehicles is the curricle, which is also 
the safest. There is something worth looking at in the pair of 
horses, with that sparkling pole of steel laid across them. It is 
like a bar of music, comprising their harmonious course. But 
to us, even gigs are but a sort of unsuccessful run at gentility. 
The driver, to all intents and purposes, had better be on the horse. 
Horseback is the noblest way of being carried in the world. It 
is cheaper than any other mode of riding ; it is common to all 
ranks ; and it is manly, graceful, and healthy. The hand- 
somest mixture of danger with dignity, in the shape of a car- 
riage, was the tall phaeton with its yellow wings. We remem- 
ber looking up to it with respect in our childhood, partly for its 
loftiness, partly for its name, and partly for the show it maKes in 
the prints to novels of that period, The most gallant figure which 
4 



34 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 



modern driving ever cut, was in the person of a late Duke of 
Hamilton; of whom we have read or heard somewhere, that he 
used to dash round the streets of Rome, with his horses panting 
and his hounds barking ahout his phaeton, to the equal fright and 
admiration of the Masters of the World, who were accustomed to 
witness nothing higher than a lumbering old coach, or a cardinal 
on a mule. 

A post-chaise involves the idea of travelling, which, in the com- 
pany of those we love, is home in motion. The smooth running 
along the road, the fresh air, the variety of scene, the leafy 
roads, the bursting prospects, the clatter through a town, the 
gaping gaze of a village, the hearty appetite, the leisure (your 
chaise waiting only upon your own movements), even the little 
contradictions to home-comfort, and the expedients upon which 
they set us, all put the animal spirits at work, and throw a novelty 
over the road of life. If anything could grind us young again, 
it would be the wheels of a post-chaise. The only monotonous 
sight is the perpetual up-and-down movement of the postilion, 
who, we wish exceedingly, could take a chair. His occasional 
retreat to the bar which occupies the place of a box, and his 
affecting to sit upon it, only reminds us of its exquisite want of 
accommodation. But some have given the bar, lately, a surrep- 
titious squeeze in the middle, and flattened it a little into some- 
thing obliquely resembling an inconvenient seat. 

If we are to believe the merry Columbus of Down-Hall, 
calashes, now almost obsolete for any purpose, used to be hired 
for travelling occasions a hundred years back : but he preferred 
a chariot ; and neither was good. Yet see how pleasantly good- 
humor rides over its inconveniences. 

Then answer'd 'Squire Morley, " Pray get a calash, 
That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash ; 
I love dirt and dust ; and 'tis always my pleasure 
To take with me much of the soil that I measure." 

But Matthew thought better : for Matthew thought right, 
And hired a chariot so trim and so tight, 
That extremes both of winter and summer might pass ; 
For one window was canvas, the other was glass. 

" Draw up," quoth friend Matthew ; " Pull down," quoth friend John ; 
" We shall be both hotter and colder anon." 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 35 

Thus, talking and scolding, they forward did speed ; 
And Ralpho paced by under Newman the Swede. 

Into an old inn did this equipage roll, 
At a town they call Hodson, the sign of the Bull ; 
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway, 
And into a puddle throws mother of tea. 

" Come here, my sweet landlady, pray how d'ye do ? 
Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue ? 
And where is the widow that dwelt here below ? 
And the hostler that sung about eight years ago ? 

And where is your sister, so mild and so dear, 
Whose voice to her maids like a trumpet was clear ?" 
" By my troth," she replies, " you grow younger I think : 
And pray, Sir, wmat wine does the gentleman drink ? 

" Why now let me die, Sir, or live upon trust, 
If I know to which question to answer you first : 
Why things, since I saw you, most strangely have varied ; 
The hostler is hang'd, and the widow is married. 

" And True left a child for the parish to nurse, 
And Cicely went off with a gentleman's purse ; 
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear, 
She has lain in the church-yard full many a year." 

" Well ; peace to her ashes ! What signifies grief? 
She roasted red veal, and she powder'd lean beef: 
Full m'cely she knew to cook up a fine dish ; 
For tough were her pullets, and tender her fish."— Prior. 

This quotation reminds us of a little poem by the same author, 
entitled the Secretary, which, as it is short, and runs upon chaise- 
wheels, and seems to have slipped the notice it deserves, we will 
do ourselves the pleasure of adding. It was written when he 
was Secretary of Embassy at the Hague, where he seems to have 
edified the Dutch with his insisting upon enjoying himself, The 
astonishment with which the good Hollander and his wife look 
up to him as he rides, and the touch of yawning dialect at the 
end are extremely pleasant. 

While with labor assiduous due pleasure I mix, 
And in one day atone for the business of six, 



36 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 



In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night, 

On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right : 

No Memoirs to compose, and no Post-boy to move, 

That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love ; 

For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea, 

Nor the long-winded cant of a dull Refugee : 

This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine, — ' 

To good or ill-fortune the third we resign : 

Thus scorning the world and superior to fate, 

I drive on my car in processional state. 

So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode ; 

Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god. 

But why should I stories of Athens rehearse, 

Where people knew love, and were partial to verse ? 

Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose, 

In Holland half drowned in interest and prose ? 

By Greece and past ages what need I be tried, 

When the Hague and the present are both on my side ? 

And is it enough for the joys of the day, 

To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say ? 

When good Vandergoes, and his provident vrow, 

As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow, 

That, search all the province, you'll fine no man dar is 

So blest as the JEnglishen Heer Secretar* is. 

If Prior had been living now, he would have found the great- 
est want of travelling accommodation in a country for whose 
more serious wants we have to answer, without having her wit 
to help us to an excuse. There is a story told of an Irish post- 
chaise, the occupier of which, without quitting it, had to take to 
his heels. It was going down hill as fast as wind and the im- 
possibility of stopping could make it, when the foot passengers 
observed a couple of legs underneath, emulating, with all their 
might, the rapidity of the wheels. The bottom had come out ; 
and the gentleman was obliged to run for his life. 

We must relate another anecdote of an Irish post-chaise, 
merely to show the natural tendencies of the people to be law- 
less in self-defence. A friend of ours,* who was travelling 
among them, used to have this proposition put to him by the 
postilion whenever he approached a turnpike. " Plase your 
honor, will I drive at the pike ?" The pike hung loosely across 

* Mr. Shelley. 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 37 

the road. Luckily, the rider happened to be of as lawless a turn 
for justice as the driver, so the answer was always a cordial 
one : — " Oh yes — drive at the pike." The pike made way ac- 
cordingly ; and in a minute or two, the gate people were heard 
and seen, screaming in vain after the illegal charioteers. 

Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus. — Virgil. 

The driver 's borne beyond their swearing, 
And the post-chaise is hard of hearing. 

As to following them, nobody in Ireland thinks of moving too 
much, legal or illegal. 

The pleasure to be had in a mail-coach is not so much at one's 
command, as that of a post-chaise. There is generally too little 
room in it, and too much hurry out of it. The company must 
not lounge over their breakfast, even if they are all agreed. It 
is an understood thing, that they are to be uncomfortably punc- 
tual. They must get in at seven o'clock, though they are all 
going upon business they do not like or care about, or will have 
to wait till nine before they can do anything. Some persons 
know how to manage this haste, and breakfast and dine in the 
cracking of a whip. They stick with their fork, they joint, they 
sliver, they bolt. Legs and wings vanish before them like a dra- 
gon's before a knight-errant. But if one is not a clergyman or 
a regular jolly fellow, one has no chance this way. To be diffi- 
dent or polite, is fatal. It is a merit eagerly acknowledged, and 
as quickly set aside. At last you begin upon a leg, and are 
called off. 

A very troublesome degree of science is necessary for being 
well settled in the coach. We remember travelling in our youth, 
upon the north road, with an orthodox elderly gentleman of ven- 
erable peruke, who talked much with a grave-looking young 
man about universities, and won our inexperienced heart with a 
notion that he was deep in Horace and Virgil. He was deeper in 
his wig. Towards evening, as he seemed restless, we asked 
with much diffidence whether a change, even for the worse, 
might not relieve him ; for we were riding backwards, and thought 
that all elderly people disliked that way. He insinuated the 



38 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 

very objection ; so we recoiled from asking him again. In a 
minute or two, however, he insisted that we were uneasy our- 
selves, and that he must relieve us for our own sake. We pro- 
tested as filially as possible against this ; but at last, out of mere 
shame of disputing the point with so benevolent an elder, we 
changed seats with him. After an interval of bland meditation, 
we found the evening sun full in our face. — His new comfort set 
him dozing ; and every now and then he jerked his wig in our 
eyes, till we had the pleasure of seeing him take out a nightcap 
and look very ghastly. — The same person, and his serious 
young companion, tricked us out of a good bed we happened to 
get at the inn. 

The greatest peculiarity attending a mail-coach arises from its 
travelling at night. The gradual decline of talk, the incipient 
snore, the rustling and shifting of legs and nightcaps, the cessa- 
tion of other noises on the road — the sound of the wind or rain, 
of the moist circuit of the wheels, and of the time-beating tread 
of the horses — all dispose the traveller, who cannot sleep, to a 
double sense of the little that is left him to observe. The coach 
stops, the door opens, a rush of cold air announces the demands 
and merits of the guard, who is taking his leave, and is anxious 
to remember us. The door is clapped to again ; the sound of 
everything outside becomes dim ; and voices are heard knocking 
up the people of the inn, and answered by issuing yawns and ex- 
cuses. Wooden shoes clog heavily about. The horses' mouths 
are heard, swilling up the water out of tubs. All is still again, 
and some one in the coach takes a long breath. The driver 
mounts, and we resume our way. It happens that we can sleep 
anywhere except in a mail-coach ; so that we hate to see a pru- 
dent, warm, old fellow, who has been eating our fowls and inter- 
cepting our toast, put on his night-cap in order to settle himself 
till morning. We rejoice in the digs that his neighbor's elbow 
gives him, and hail the long-legged traveller that sits opposite. 
A passenger of our wakefrl description must try to content him- 
self with listening to the sounds above mentioned ; or thinking of 
his friends ; or turning verses, as Sir Richard Blackmore did, 
"to the rumbling of his coach's wheels." 

The stage-coach is a great and unpretending accommodation. 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 39 

It is a cheap substitute, notwithstanding all its eighteen-penny 
and two-and-sixpenn.y temptations, for keeping a carriage or a 
horse ; and we really think, in spite of its gossiping, is no mean 
help to village liberality ; for its passengers are so mixed, so 
often varied, so little yet so much together, so compelled to ac- 
commodate, so willing to pass a short time pleasantly, and so 
liable to the criticism of strangers, that it is hard if they do not 
get a habit of speaking, or even thinking more kindly of one an- 
other than if they mingled less often, or under other circumstan- 
ces. The old and infirm are treated with reverence ; the ailing 
sympathized with ; the healthy congratulated ; the rich not dis- 
tinguished ; the poor well met ; the young, with their faces con- 
scious of ride, patronized, and allowed to be extra. Even the 
fiery, nay the fat, learn to bear with each other ; and if some 
high-thoughted persons will talk now and then of their great ac- 
quaintances, or their preference of a carriage, there is an instinct 
which tells the rest, that they would not make such appeals to 
their good opinion, if they valued it so little as might be supposed. 
Stoppings and dust are not pleasant, but the latter may be had 
on grander occasions ; and if any one is so unlucky as never to 
keep another stopping himself, he must be content with the supe- 
riority of his virtue. 

The mail or stage-coachman, upon the whole, is no inhuman 
mass of great-coat, gruifness, civility, and old boots. The latter 
is the politer, from the smaller range of acquaintance, and his 
necessity for preserving them. His face is red, and his voice 
rough, by the same process of drink and catarrh. He has a sil- 
ver watch with a steel-chain, and plenty of loose silver in his 
pocket, mixed with halfpence. He serves the houses he goes by 
for a clock. He take a glass at every alehouse ; for thirst, 
when it is dry, and for warmth when it is wet. He likes to show 
the judicious reach of his whip, by twigging a dog or a goose on 
the road, or children that get in the way. His tenderness to 
descending old ladies is particular. He touches his hat to Mr. 
Smith. He gives " the young woman" a ride, and lends her his 
box-coat in the rain. His liberality in imparting his knowledge 
to any one that has the good fortune to ride on the box with him, 
is a happy mixture of deference, conscious possession, and fami- 



40 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 

liarity. His information chiefly lies in the occupancy of houses 
on the road, prize-fighters, Bow-street runners, and accidents. 
He concludes that you know Dick Sams, or old Joey, and pro- 
ceeds to relate some of the stories that relish his pot and tobacco 
in the evening. If any of the four-in-hand gentry go by, he 
shakes his head, and thinks they might find something better to 
do. His contempt for them is founded on modesty. He tells you 
that his off-hand horse is as pretty a goer as ever was, but that 
Kitty — "Yeah, now there, Kitty, can't you be still? Kitty's a 
devil, Sir, for all you wouldn't think it." He knows that the 
boys on the road admire him, and gives the horses an indifferent 
lash with his whip as they go by. If you wish to know what 
rain and dust can do, you should look at his old hat. There is 
an indescribably placid and paternal look in the position of his 
corduroy knees and old top-boots on the foot-board, with their 
pointed toes and never-cleaned soles. His heau-ideal of appear- 
ance is a frock-coat, with mother-o'-pearl buttons, a striped yel- 
low waistcoat, and a flower in his mouth. 

But all our praises why for Charles and Robert ? 
Rise, honest Mews, and sing the classic Bobart. 

Is the quadrijugal virtue of that learned person still extant ? 
That Olympic and Baccalaureated charioteer ? — That best 
educated and most erudite of coachmen, of whom Dominie 
Sampson is alone worthy to speak ? That singular punning and 
driving commentary on the Sunt quos curriculo collegisse ? In 
short, the worthy and agreeable Mr. Bobart, Bachelor of Arts. 
who drove the Oxford stage some years ago, capped verses and 
the front of his hat with equal dexterity, and read Horace over 
his brandy-and-water of an evening 1 We had once the plea- 
sure of being beaten by him in that capital art, he having brought 
up against us an unusual number of those cross-armed letters, as 
puzzling to verse-cappers as iron-cats unto cavalry, ycleped X's ; 
which said warfare he was pleased to call to mind in after-times, 
unto divers of our comrades. The modest and natural greatness 
with which he used to say " Yait" to his horses, and then turn 
round with his rosy gills, and an eye like a fish, and give out 
the required verse, can never pass away from us, as long* as 
verses or horses run. 






chap, xlix.] COACHES. 41 

Of the hackney-coach we cannot make as short work, as many- 
persons like to make of it in reality. Perhaps it is partly a 
sense of the contempt it undergoes, which induces us to endea- 
vor to make the best of it. But it has its merits, as we shall 
show presently. In the account of its demerits, we have been 
anticipated by a new, and we are sorry to say a very good, 

poetess, of the name of Lucy V L , who has favored 

us with a sight of a manuscript poem,* in which they are re- 
lated with great nicety and sensitiveness. 

Reader. What, Sir, sorry to say that a lady is a good 
poetess ? 

Indicator. Only inasmuch, Madam, as the lady gives such 
authority to the antisocial view of this subject, and will not 
agree with us as to the beatitude of the hackney-coach. — But 
hold : — upon turning to the manuscript again, we find that the 
objections are put into the mouth of a dandy courtier. This 
makes a great difference. The hackney resumes all which it 
had lost in the good graces of the fair authoress. The only 
wonder is, how the courtier could talk so well. Here is the 
passage. 

Eban, untempted by the Pastry-cooks 
(Of Pastry he got store within the Palace), 
With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks, 
Incognito upon his errand sallies, 
His smelling-bottle ready for the alleys ; 
He pass'd the Hurdy-gurdies with disdain, 
Vowing he'd have them sent on board the galleys : 
Just as he made his vow, it 'gan to rain, 
Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain. 

" I'll pull the string," said he, and further said, 
" Polluted Jarvey ! Ah, thou filthy hack ! 
Whose strings of life are all dried up and dead, 
Whose linsey-wolsey lining hangs all slack, 
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack ; 
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter ; 
Whose glass once up can never be got back, 
Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter, 
That 'tis of vile no-use to travel in a litter. 

* By Mr. Keats. The manuscript purports to have been written by a 
Mi9s Lucy Vaughan Lloyd. 



42 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 

" Thou inconvenience ! thou hungry crop 
For all corn ! thou snail creeper to and fro, 
Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop, 
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go ; 
P the morning, freighted with a weight of woe, 
Unto some Lazar-house thou journiest, 
And in the evening tak'st a double row ■ 
Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest. 
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west. 

" By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien, 
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge ; 
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign, 
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge, 
School' d in a beckon, learned in a nudge ; 
A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare ; 
Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge 
To whisking Tilburies or Phaetons rare, 
Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare." 

Philosophising thus, he pull'd the check, 
And bade the coachman wheel to such a street ; 
Who turning much in body, more his neck, 
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet. 

The tact here is so nice, of the infirmities which are but too 
likely to beset our poor old friend, that we should only spoil it to 
say more. To pass then to the merits. 

One of the greatest helps to a sense of merit in other things, 
is a consciousness of one's own wants. Do you despise a hack- 
ney-coach ? Get tired ; get old ; get young again. Lay down 
your carriage, or make it less uneasily too easy. Have to stand 
up half an hour, out of a storm, under a gateway. Be ill, and 
wish to visit a friend who is worse. Fall in love, and want to 
sit next your mistress. Or if all this will not do, fall in a cellar. 

Ben Jonson, in a fit of indignation at the niggardliness of 
James the First, exclaimed, " He despises me, I suppose, be- 
cause I live in an alley : — tell him his soul lives in an alley." 
We think we see a hackney-coach moved out of its ordinary 
patience, and hear it say, " You there, who sit looking so scorn- 
fully at me out of your carriage, are yourself the thing you take 
me for. Your understanding is a hackney-coach. It is lum- 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 43 

bering, rickety, and at a stand. When it moves, it is drawn by 
things like itself. It is at once the most stationary and the most 
servile of common-places. And when a good thing is put into it, 
it does not know it." 

But it is difficult to imagine a hackney-coach under so irrita- 
ble an aspect. Hogarth has drawn a set of hats or wigs with 
countenances of their own. We have noticed the same thing 
in the faces of houses ; and it sometimes gets in one's way in a 
landscape-painting, with the outlines of the rocks and trees. A 
friend tells us, that the hackney-coach has its countenance, with 
gesticulation besides : and now he has pointed it out, we can 
easily fancy it. Some of them look chucked under the chin, 
some nodding, some coming at you sideways. We shall never 
find it easy, however, to fancy the irritable aspect above men- 
tioned. A hackney-coach always appeared to us the most 
quiescent of moveables. Its horses and it, slumbering on a 
stand, are an emblem of all the patience in creation, animate 
and inanimate. The submission with which the coach takes 
every variety of the weather, dust, rain, and wind, never mov- 
ing but when some eddying blast makes its old body shiver, is 
only surpassed by the vital patience of the horses. Can any- 
thing better illustrate the poet's line about 

— Years that bring the philosophic mind, 

than the still-hung head, the dim indifferent eye, the dragged and 
blunt-cornered mouth, and the gaunt imbecility of body drop- 
ping its weight on three tired legs in order to give repose to the 
lame one ? When it has blinkers on, they seem to be shutting 
up its eyes for death, like the windows of a house. Fatigue and 
the habit of suffering have become as natural to the creature as 
the bit to its mouth. Once in half an hour it moves the position 
of its leg, or shakes its drooping ears. The whip makes it go, 
more from habit than from pain. Its coat has become almost 
callous to minor stings. The blind and staggering fly in autumn 
might come to die against its cheek. 

Of a pair of hackney-coach horses, one so much resembles 
the other that it seems unnecessary for them to compare notes. 



44 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 



They have that within them, which is beyond the comparative. 
They no longer bend their heads towards each other, as they go. 
They stand together as if unconscious of one another's company. 
But they are not. An old horse misses his companion, like an 
old man. The presence of an associate, who has gone through 
pain and suffering with us, need not say anything. It is talk, 
and memory, and everything. Something of this it may be to 
our old friends in harness. What are they thinking of, while 
they stand motionless in the rain ? Do they remember % Do 
they dream ? Do they still, unperplexed as their old blood is by 
too many foods, receive a pleasure from the elements ; a dull 
refreshment from the air and sun ? Have they yet a palate for 
the hay which they pull so feebly ? or for the rarer grain, which 
induces them to perform their only voluntary gesture of any 
vivacity, and toss up the bags that are fastened on their mouths, 
to get at its shallow feast ? 

If the old horse were gifted with memory (and who shall say 
he is not, in one thing as well as another?) it might be at once 
the most melancholy and pleasantest faculty he has ; for the 
commonest hack has probably been a hunter or racer ; has had 
his days of lustre and enjoyment ; has darted along the course, 
and scoured the pasture ; has carried his master proudly, or his 
lady gently ; has pranced, has galloped, has neighed aloud, has 
dared, has forded, has spurned at mastery, has graced it and 
made it proud, has rejoiced the eye, has been crowded to as an 
actor, has been all instinct with life and quickness, has had his 
very fear admired as courage, and been sat upon by valor as its 
chosen seat. 

His ears up-prick'd; his braided hanging mane 

Upon his compass' d crest now stands on end ; 

His nostrils drink the air ; and forth again, 

As from a furnace, vapors doth he send ; 

His eye, which scornfully glistens like fire, 
Shows his hot courage and his high desire. 

Sometimes he trots as if he told the steps 
With gentle majesty, and modest pride; 
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps, 
As who would say, lo ! thus my strength is tried, 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 45 

And thus I do to captivate the eye 
Of the fair breeder that is standing by. 

What recketh he his riders angry stir, 

His flattering holla, or his Stand, I say ? 

What cares he now for curb, or pricking spur ? 

For rich caparisons, or trappings gay ? 

He sees his love, and nothing else he sees, 
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees. 

Look, when a painter would surpass the life, 

In limning out a well-proportion'd steed, 

His art with nature's workmanship at strife, 

As if the dead the living should exceed ; 
So did this horse excel a common one, 
In shape, in courage, color, pace, and bone. 

Round-hoof 'd, short-jointed, fetlock shag and long, 
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide ; 
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong 
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide ; 

Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack, 

Save a proud rider on so proud a back. 

Alas ! his only riders now are the rain and a sordid harness ! 
The least utterance of the wretchedest voice makes him stop and 
become a fixture. His loves were in existence at the time the 
old sign, fifty miles hence, was painted. His nostrils drink 
nothing but what they cannot help, — the water out of an old tub. 
Not all the hounds in the world could make his ears attain any 
eminence. His mane is scratchy and lax. The same great 
poet who wrote the triumphal verses for him and his loves, has 
written their living epitaph : — 

The poor jades 
Lob down their heads, dropping the hide and hips, 
The gum down roping from their pale dead eyes ; 
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit 
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless. 

K. Henry oth, Act 4. 

There is a song called the High-mettled Racer, describing the 
progress of a favorite horse's life, from its time of vigor and 
glory, down to its furnishing food for the dogs. It is not as 



46 INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 

good as Shakspeare ; but it will do, to those who are half as 
kind as he. We defy anybody to read that song or be in the 
habit of singing it or hearing it sung, and treat horses as they 
are sometimes treated. So much good may an author do, who 
is in earnest, and does not go in a pedantic way to work. We 
will not say that Plutarch's good-natured observation about taking 
care of one's old horse did more for that class of retired servants 
than all the graver lessons of philosophy. For it is philosophy 
which first sets people thinking ; and then some of them put it in 
a more popular shape. But we will venture to say^ that Plu- 
tarch's observation saved many a steed of antiquity a superflu- 
ous thump ; and in this respect, the author of the High-mettled 
Racer (Mr. Dibdin we believe, no mean man in his way) may 
stand by the side of the old illustrious biographer. Next to 
ancient causes, to the inevitable progress of events, and to the 
practical part of Christianity (which persons, the most accused 
of irrellgion, have preserved like a glorious infant, through ages 
of blood and fire), the kindliness of modern philosophy is more 
immediately owing to the grand national writers of Europe, in 
whose schools we have all been children : — to Voltaire in France, 
and Shakspeare in England. Shakspeare, in his time, obliquely 
pleaded the cause of the Jew, and got him set on a common level 
with humanity. The Jew has since been not only allowed to be 
human, but some have undertaken to show him as the " best 
good Christian though he knows it not." We shall not dispute 
the title with him, nor with the other worshippers of Mammon, 
who force him to the same shrine. We allow, as things go in 
that quarter, that the Jew is as great a Christian as his neighbor, 
and his neighbor as great a Jew as he. There is neither love 
nor money lost between them. But at all events, the Jew is a 
man ; and with Shakspeare's assistance, the time has arrived, 
when we can afford to acknowledge the horse for a fellow-crea- 
ture, and treat him as one. We may say for him, upon the same 
grounds and to the same purpose, as Shakspeare said for the 
Israelite, " Hath not a horse organs, dimensions, senses, affec- 
tions, passions ? hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same 
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the 
same winter and summer, as a Christian is V 9 Oh — but some 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 47 

are always at hand to cry out, — it would be effeminate to think 
too much of these things ! — Alas ! we have no notion of asking 
the gentlemen to think too much of anything. If they will think 
at all, it will be a great gain. As to effeminacy (if we must use 
that ungallant and partial word, for want of a better) it is cru- 
elty that is effeminate. It is selfishness that is effeminate. Any- 
thing is effeminate, which would get an excitement, or save a 
proper and manly trouble, at the undue expense of another. — 
How does the case stand then between those who ill-treat their 
horses, and those who spare them ? 

To return to the coach. Imagine a fine coach and pair, 
which are standing at the door of a house, in all the pride of 
their strength and beauty, converted into what they may both 
become, a hackney, and its old shamblers. Such is one of the 
meditations of the philosophic eighteenpenny rider. A hackney- 
coach has often the arms of nobility on it. As we are going to 
get into it, we catch a glimpse of the faded lustre of an earl's or 
marquis's coronet, and think of how many light or proud hearts 
have ascended those now rickety steps. In this coach perhaps 
an elderly lady once rode to her w T edding, a blooming and blush- 
ing girl. Her mother and sister were on each side of her ; the 
bridegroom opposite in a blossom-colored coat. They talk of 
everything in the world of which they are not thinking. The 
sister was never prouder of her. The mother with difficulty 
represses her own pride and tears. The bride, thinking he is 
looking at her, casts down her eyes, pensive in her joy. The 
bridegroom is at once the proudest, and the humblest, and the 
happiest man in the world — For our parts, we sit in a corner, 
and are in love with the sister. We dream she is going to speak 
to answer to some indifferent question, when a hoarse voice 
comes in at the front window, and says " Whereabouts, Sir !" 

And grief has consecrated thee, thou reverend dilapidation, 
as well as joy ! Thou hast carried unwilling, as well as willing 
hearts ; hearts, that have thought the slowest of thy paces too 
fast ; faces that have sat back in a corner of thee, to hide their 
tears from the very thought of being seen. In thee the destitute 
have been taken to the poor-house, and the wounded and sick to 
the hospital ; and many an arm has been round many an insensible 



48 THE INDICATOR. [chap. xlix. 

waist. Into thee the friend or the lover has hurried, in a pas- 
sion of tears, to lament his loss. In thee he has hastened to 
condole the dying or the wretched. In thee the father, or 
mother, or the older kinswoman, more patient in her years, has 
taken the little child to the grave, the human jewel that must be 
parted with. 

But joy appears in thee again, like the look-in of the sun. 
shine. If the lover has gone in thee unwillingly, he has "also 
gone willingly. How many friends hast thou not carried to 
merry-meetings ! How many young parties to the play ! How 
many children, whose faces thou hast turned in an instant from 
the extremity of lachrymose weariness to that of staring delight. 
Thou hast contained as many different passions in thee as a hu- 
man heart ; and for the sake of the human heart, old body, thou 
art venerable. Thou shalt be as respectable as a reduced old 
gentleman, whose very slovenliness is pathetic. Thou shalt be 
made gay, as he is over a younger and richer table, and thou 
shalt be still more touching for the gaiety. 

We wish the hackney-coachman were as interesting a ma- 
chine as either his coach or horses ; but it must be owned, that of 
all the driving species he is the least agreeable specimen. 
This is partly to be attributed to the life which has most probably 
put him into his situation ; partly to his want of outside passen- 
gers to cultivate his gentility ; and partly to the disputable na- 
ture of his fare, which always leads him to be lying and cheat- 
ing. The waterman of the stand, who beats him in sordidness 
of appearance, is more respectable. He is less of a vagabond, 
and cannot cheat you. Nor is the hackney-coachman only dis- 
agreeable in himself, but, like FalstafF reversed, the cause of dis- 
agreeableness in others ; for he sets people upon disputing with 
him in pettiness and ill-temper. He induces the mercenary to 
be violent, and the violent to seem mercenary, A man whom 
you took for a pleasant laughing fellow, shall all of a sudden put 
on an irritable look of calculation, and vow that he will be charged 
with a constable rather than pay the sixpence. Even fair woman 
shall waive her all-conquering softness, and sound a shrill 
trumpet in reprobation of the extortionate charioteer, whom, if she 
were a man, she says she would exoose. Being a woman, then, let 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 49 

her not expose herself. Oh, but it is intolerable to be so impos- 
ed upon ! Let the lady, then, get a pocket-book, if she must, 
with the hackney-coach fares in it; or a pain in the legs, rather 
than the temper ; or, above all, let her get wiser, and have an 
understanding that can dispense with the good opinion of the 
hackney-coachman. Does she think that her rosy lips were 
made to grow pale about two-and- sixpence ; or that the expres- 
sion of them will ever be like her cousin Fanny's, if she goes 
on? 

The stage-coachman likes the boys on the road, because he 
knows they admire him. The hackney-coachman knows that 
they cannot admire him, and that they can get up behind his 
coach, which makes him very savage. The cry of " Cut be- 
hind I" from the malicious urchins on the pavement, wounds at 
once his self-love and his interest. He would not mind over- 
loading his master's horses for another sixpence, but to do it for 
nothing is what shocks his humanity. He hates the boys for im- 
posing upon him, and the boys for reminding him that he has 
been imposed upon ; and he would willingly twinge the cheeks 
of all nine. The cut of his whip over the coach is malignant. 
He has a constant eye to the road behind him. He has also an 
eye to what may be left in the coach. He will undertake to 
search the straw for you, and miss the half-crown on purpose. 
He speculates on what he may get above his fare, according to 
your manners or company ; and knows how much to ask for 
driving faster or slower than usual. He does not like wet 
weather so much as people suppose ; for he says it rots both his 
horses and harness, and he takes parties out of town when the 
weather is fine, which produces good payments in a lump. 
Lovers, late supper-eaters, and girls going home from boarding- 
school, are his best pay. He has a rascally air of remonstrance 
when you dispute half the over-charge, and according to the 
temper he is in, begs you to consider his bread, hopes you will 
not make such a fuss about a trifle ; or tells you, you may take 
his number or sit in the coach all night. 

A great number of ridiculous adventures must have taken 
place, in which hackney-coaches were concerned. The story of 
the celebrated harlequin Lunn, who secretly pitched himself out 
5 



50 THE INDICATOR. [chap, xlix, 

of one into a tavern window, and when the coachman was about 
to submit to the loss of his fare, astonished him by calling out 
again from the inside, is too well known for repetition. There 
is one of Swift, not perhaps so common. He was going, one 
dark evening, to dine with some great man, and was accompanied 
by some other clergymen, to whom he gave their cue. They 
were all in their canonicals. When they arrive at the house, 
the coachman opens the door, and lets down the steps. Down 
steps the Dean, very reverend in his black robes; after him 
comes another personage, equally black and dignified ; then 
another ; then a fourth. The coachman, who recollects taking 
up no greater number, is about to put up the steps, when another 
clergyman descends. After giving way to this other, he pro- 
ceeds with great confidence to toss them up, when lo ! another 
comes. Well, there cannot, he thinks, be more than six. He is 
mistaken. Down comes a seventh, then an eighth ; then a 
ninth ; all with decent intervals ; the coach, in the mean time, rock- 
ing as if it were giving birth to so many demons. The coachman 
can conclude no less. He cries out, " The devil ! the devil !" 
and is preparing to run away, when they all burst into laughter. 
They had gone round as they descended, and got in at the other 
door. 

We remember in our boyhood an edifying comment on the 
proverb of " all is not gold that glistens." The spectacle made 
such an impression upon us, that we recollect the very spot, 
which was at the corner of a road in the way from Westminster 
to Kennington, near a stone-mason's. It was a severe winter, 
and we were out on a holiday, thinking, perhaps, of the gallant 
hardships to which the ancient soldiers accustomed themselves, 
when we suddenly beheld a group of hackney-coachmen, not, as 
Spenser says of his witch, 

Busy, as seemed, about some wicked gin, 

but pledging each other in what appeared to us to be little 
glasses of cold water. What temperance, thought we ! What 
extraordinary and noble content ! What more than Roman sim- 
plicity ! Here are a set of poor Englishmen, of the homeliest 
order, in the very depth of winter, quenching their patient and 



chap, xlix.] COACHES. 51 

honorable thirst with modicums of cold water ! O true virtue 
and courage ! O sight worthy of the Timoleons and Epami- 
nondases ! We know not how long we remained in this error ; 
but the first time we recognized the white devil for what it was 
— the first time we saw through the crystal purity of its appear- 
ance — was a great blow to us. We did not then know what 
the drinkers went through ; and this reminds us that we have 
omitted one great redemption of the hackney-coachman's cha- 
racter — his being at the mercy of all chances and weathers. 
Other drivers have their settled hours and pay. He only is at the 
mercy of every call and every casualty ; he only is dragged, with- 
out notice, like the damned in Milton, into the extremities of wet 
and cold, from his alehouse fire to the freezing rain ; he only 
must go anywhere, at what hour and to whatever place you 
choose, his old rheumatic limbs shaking under his weight of rags, 
and the snow and sleet beating into his puckered face, through 
streets which the wind scours like a channel. 



52 THE INDICATOR. [chap. l. 



CHAPTER L. 

Remarks upon Andrea De Basso's Ode to a Dead Body.* 

We are given to understand by the Italian critics, that this poern 
Kiade a great sensation, and was alone thought sufficient to ren- 
der its author of celebrity. Its loathly heroine had been a 
beauty of Ferrara, proud and luxurious. It is written in a 
fierce Catholic spirit, and is incontestably very striking and even 
appalling. Images, which would only be disgusting on other 
occasions, affect us beyond disgust, by the strength of such ear- 
nestness and sincerity. Andrea de Basso lays bare the mortify- 
ing conclusions of the grave, and makes the pride of beauty 
bow down to them. The picture of the once beautiful, proud, 
and unthinking creature, caught and fixed down in a wasting 
trap, — the calling upon her to come forth, and see if any will 
now be won into her arms, — the taunts about the immortal balm 
which she thought she had in her veins, — the whole, in short, of 
the terrible disadvantage under which she is made to listen with 
unearthly ears to the poet's lecture, affects the imagination to 
shuddering. 

No wonder that such an address made a sensation, even upon 
the gaiety of a southern city. One may conceive how it fixed 
the superstitious more closely over their meditations and skulls ; 
how it sent the young, and pious, and humble, upon their knees; 
how it baulked the vivacity of the serenaders ; brought tears 
into the eyes of affectionate lovers ; and shot doubt and confu- 
sion even into the cheeks of the merely wanton. Andrea de 
Basso, armed with the lightnings of his church, tore the cover- 
ing from the grave, and smote up the heart of Ferrara as with 
an earthquake. 

* The reader will gather the substance of it from what follows. The ode 
is to be found in the sixth volume of the Parnaso Italiano. A translation 
has appeared in the volume of the author's Poetical Works, just published. 



chap, l.] REMARKS UPON DE BASSO'S ODE. 53 

For a lasting impression, however, or for such a one as he 
would have desired, the author, with all his powers, overshot his 
mark. Men build again over earthquakes, as nature resumes 
her serenity. The Ferrarese returned to their loves and guitars, 
when absolution had set them to rights. It was impossible that 
Andrea de Basso should have succeeded in fixing such impres- 
sions upon the mind ; and it would have been an error in logic, 
as well as everything else, if he had. He committed himself, 
both as a theologian and a philosopher. There is an allusion, 
towards the end of his ode, to the Catholic notion, that the death 
of a saintly person is accompanied by what they call " the odor 
of sanctity ;" — a literalised metaphor, which they must often 
have been perplexed to maintain. But the assents of supersti-^ 
tion, and the instinct of common sense, keep a certain separa- 
tion at bottom ; and the poet drew such a picture of mortality, 
as would unavoidably be applied to every one, vicious or vir- 
tuous. It was too close and mortifying, even for the egotism of 
religious fancy to overcome. All would have an interest in con- 
tradicting it somehow or other. 

On the other hand, if they could not well contradict or bear 
to think of it, his mark was overshot there. It has been observed, 
in times of shipwrecks, plagues, and other circumstances of a 
common despair, that upon the usual principles of extremes 
meeting, mankind turn upon Death their pursuer, and defy him 
to the teeth. The superstitious in vain exhort them to think^ 
and threaten them with the consequences of refusal. They 
have threats enough. If they could think to any purpose of re- 
freshment, they would. But time presses ; the exhortation is 
too like the evil it would remedy ; and they endeavor to crowd 
into a few moments all the enjoyments to which nature has given 
them a tendency, and to which, with a natural piety beyond 
that of their threateners, they feel that they have both a ten- 
dency and a right. If many such odes as Basso's could have 
been written, — if the court of Ferrara had turned superstitious 
and patronised such productions, the next age would not merely 
have been lively ; it would have been debauched. 

Again, the reasoning of such appeals to the general sense is 
absurd in itself, They call upon us to join life and death to- 



54 THE INDICATOR. [chap. l. 

gether ; to think of what we are not, with the feelings of what 
we are ; to be different and yet the same. Hypochondria may 
do this ; a melancholy imagination, or a strong imagination of 
any sort, may do it for a time ; but it will never be done gene- 
rally, and nature never intended it should. A decaying dead 
body is no more the real human being, than a watch, stopped 
and mutilated, is a time-piece, or cold water warm, or a numb 
finger in the same state of sensation as the one next it, or any 
one ^modification of being the same as another. We may pitch 
ourselves by imagination into this state of being ; but it is our- 
selves, modified by our present totalities and sensation, that we 
do pitch there. What we may be otherwise, is another thing. 
The melancholy imagination may give it melancholy fancies ; 
the livelier one, if it pleases, may suppose it a state of exqui- 
site dissolution. The philosopher sees in it nothing but a contra- 
diction to the life by which we judge of it, and a dissolution of 
the compounds which held us together. There is one thing 
alone in such gloomy beggings of a question, which throws 
them back upon the prescriptions of wisdom, and prevents them 
from becoming general. They are always accompanied by ill 
health. We do not mean a breaking up of the frame, or that 
very road to death, which may be a kindly and cheerful one, 
illuminated by the sunset, as youth was by the dawn : but a pol- 
luted and artificial state of blood, or an insufficient vigor of ex- 
istence, — that state, in short, which is an exception to the general 
condition of humanity, and acts like the proof of a rule to the 
intentions of Nature. For these are so kind, that no mistake 
in the world, not even vice itself, is so sure to confuse a man's 
sensations and render them melancholy, as ill-health. Nature 
seems to say to us, " Be, above all things, as natural as you can 
be, — as much as possible in the best fashion of the mould in 
which I cast you, — and you shall be happy." Nor is this un- 
lucky for virtue, but most lucky : for it takes away its pride, and 
leaves it its cheerfulness. Real vice will soon be found to be real 
unhealthiness : nor could society have a better guide to the re- 
formation of its moral systems, than by making them as com- 
patible as possible with every healthy impulse. But why, it may 
be asked, are we not all healthy ? It is impossible to say : but 



chap, l.] REMARKS UPON DE BASSO'S ODE. 55 

this is certain, that the oftener a man asks himself that question, 
the more intimations he has that he is to try and get out of the ten- 
dency to ask them. We may live elsewhere : we may be com- 
pounded over again, and receive a new consciousness here ; — a 
guess which, if it seems dreary at first, might lead us to make a 
heaven of the earth we live in, even for our own sakes hereafter. 
But at all events, put, as Jupiter says in the fable, your shoulder to 
the wheel ; and put it as cheerfully as you can. The way that 
Andrea de Basso should have set about reforming the Ferrarese 
beauties, would have been to show them, that their enjoyments 
were hurtful in proportion as they were extravagant, and less 
than they might be, in proportion as they were in bad taste. 
But to ask the healthy to be hypochondriacal : the beautiful to 
think gratuitously of ugliness ; and the giddy, much less the 
wise, to desire to be angels in heaven, by representing God as a 
cruel and eternal punisher, — is what never could, and never 
ought to have, a lasting effect on humanity. 

It has been well observed, that life is a series of present sensa- 
tions. It might be added, that the consciousness of the present 
moment is one of the strongest of those sensations. Still this 
consciousness is a series, not a line • a variety with intervals, not 
a continuity and a haunting. If it were, it would be unhealthy ; 
if it were unhealthy, it would be melancholy ; if it were melan- 
choly, the evident system upon which nature acts would be dif- 
ferent. Thus it is impossible that men should be finally led by 
gloomy, and not by pleasant doctrines. 

When the Ferrarese ladies read the poem of Andrea de Basso, 
it occupied the series of their sensations for a little while, more or 
less according to their thoughtfulness, and more or less, even 
then, according to their unhealthiness. The power of voluntary 
thought is proportioned to the state of the health. In a little time, 
the Ferrarese, being like other multitudes, and even gayer, would 
turn to their usual reflections and enjoyments, as they accord- 
ingly did. About that period Ariosto was born. He rose to vin- 
dicate the charity and good-will of nature ; and put forth more 
real wisdom, truth, and even piety, in his willing enjoyment of the 
creation, than all the monks in Ferrara could have mustered to- 
gether for centuries. 



56 THE INDICATOR. [chap. ♦ 

To conclude, Andrea de Basso mistook his own self, as well as 
the means of instructing his callous beauty. There are few 
things more oppressive to the heart, than the want of feeling in 
those whose appearance leads others to feeli ntensely — the sight 
of beauty sacrificing its own real comfort as well as ours, by a 
heartless and indiscriminate love of admiration from young and 
old, from the gross and the refined, the wise and the foolish, the 
good-natured and the ill-natured, the happy-making and the 
vicious. If Andrea de Basso's heroine was one of this stamp, 
we can imagine her to have irritated his best feelings, as well as 
his more equirocal. We hope she was not merely a giddy crea- 
ture, who had not quite patience enough with her confessor. 
Alfred the Great, when a youth, was accustomed to turn a deaf 
ear to the didactics of his holy kinsman St. Neot ; for which, 
says the worthy Bishop Asser, v/ho was nevertheless a great ad- 
mirer of the king, and wrote his life, all those troubles were after- 
wards brought upon him and his kingdom. Be this as it may, 
and supposing the Ferrarese beauty to have been an unfeeling 
one, the poet was not aware, while triumphing over her folly, and 
endeavoring to enjoy the thought of her torments, that he was 
confounding the sentiment of the thing with its reverse, and 
doing his best to make himself a worse and more hard-hearted 
person than she. His efforts to induce us to think lightly of the 
most beautiful things in the external world, by showing us that 
they will not always be what they are — that a smooth and grace- 
ful limb will not for ever be the same smooth and graceful limb, 
nor an eye an eye, nor an apple an apple, are not as wise as 
they are poetical. To have said that the limb, unless admired 
with sentiment as well as with ordinary admiration, is a com- 
mon-place thing to what it might be, and that there is more 
beauty in it than the lady supposed, would have been good. To 
make nothing of it, because she did not make as much as she 
could, is unwise. But above all, to consign her to eternal pun- 
ishment in the next world, because she gave rise to a series 
of fugitive evils in this — granting even that she, and not her 
wrong education, was the cause of them-^-is one of those idle 
worryings of himself and others, which only perplex further 



chap. L.l REMARKS UPON DE BASSO'S ODE. 57 

what they cannot explain, and have at last fairly sickened the 
world into a sense of their unheal thiness. 

What then remains of the poetical denouncements of Andrea 
de Basso 1 Why the only thing which ought to remain, and 
which when left to itself retains nothing but its pleasure — their 
poetry. When Dante and Milton shall cease to have any effect 
as religious dogmatisers, they will still be the mythological poets 
of one system of belief, as Homer is of another. So immortal 
is pleasure, and so surely does it escape out of the throng of its 
contradictions. 



58 THE INDICATOR. [chap. m. 



CHAPTER LI. 

Thoughts and Guesses on Human Nature. 
CONFUSION OF MODES OF BEING. 

People undertake to settle what ideas they shall have under 
such and such circumstances of being, when it is nothing but 
their present state of being that enables them to have those 
ideas. 

VARIETY of the colors of perception. 

There is reason to suppose that our perceptions and sensa- 
tions are more different than we imagine, even upon the most 
ordinary things, such as visible objects in general, and the sense 
of existence. We have enough in common, for common inter- 
course ; but the details are dissimilar, as we may perceive in 
the variety of palates. All people are agreed upon sweet and 
sour ; but one man prefers sour to sweet, and another this and 
that variety of sour and sweet. " What then is the use of at- 
tempting to make them agree ? " Why, we may try to make 
them agree upon certain general modes of thinking and means 
of pleasure : — we may color their existence in the gross, though 
we must leave the particular shades to come out by themselves. 
We may enrich their stock of ideas, though we cannot control 
the items of the expenditure. 

CANNOT. 

" But what if we cannot do even this ? " The question 
is answered by experience. Whole nations and ages have 
already been altered in their modes of thinking. Even if it 



chap, li.] THOUGHTS ON HUMAN NATURE. 59 

were otherwise, the endeavor is itself one of the varieties ; one 
of the modes of opinion and means of pleasure. Besides, can- 
not is the motto neither of knowledge nor humility. There is 
more of pride, and ignorance, and despair, in it, than of the 
modesty of wisdom. It would settle not only the past, but the 
future ; and it would settle the future, merely because the past 
has not been influenced by those that use it. 

Who are these men that measure futurity by the shadow of 
their own littleness ? It is as if the loose stones lying about a 
foundation were to say, "You can build no higher than our 
heads." 

SUPERSTITION AND DOCTRINE. 

Superstition attempts to settle everything by assertion ; which 
never did do, and never will. And like all assertors, even well- 
inclined ones, it shows its feebleness in anger and threatening. 
It commands us to take its problems for granted, on pain of 
being tied up to a triangle. Then come its advocates, and 
assert that this mode of treatment is proper and logical : which 
is making bad worse. The worst of all is, that this is the way 
in which the finest doctrines in the world are obstructed. They 
are like an excellent child, making the Grand Tour with a fool- 
ish overbearing tutor. The tutor runs a chance of spoiling the 
child, and makes their presence disagreeable wherever they go, 
except to their tradesmen. Let us hope the child has done with 
his tutor. 

SECOND THOUGHT ON THE VARIETY OF THE COLORS OF PERCEPTION. 

We may gather from what we read of diseased imaginations, 
how much our perceptions depend upon the modification of our 
being. We see how personal and inexperienced we are when 
we determine that such and such ideas must take place under 
other circumstances, and such and such truths be always indis- 
putable. Pleasure must always be pleasure, and pain be pain, 
because these are only names for certain results. But the re- 
sults themselves will be pleasurable or painful, according to 



60 THE INDICATOR. [chap. li. 

what they act upon. A man in health becomes sickly ; he has 
a fever, is light-headed, is hypochondriacal. His ideas are de- 
ranged, or re-arrange themselves ; and a set of new perceptions, 
and colorings of his existence, take place, as in a kaleidoscope 
when we shake it. The conclusion is, that every alteration of 
our physical particles, or of whatever else we are compounded 
with, produces a different set of perceptions and sensations. 
What we call health of body and mind is the fittest state of our 
composition upon earth : but the state of perception which is 
sickly to our state of existence, may be healthy to another. 

DEATH. 

Of all impositions on the public, the greatest seems to be 
death. It resembles the threatening faces on each side the 
Treasury. Or rather, it is a necessary bar to our tendency to 
move forward. Nature sends us out of her hand with such an 
impetus towards increase of enjoyment, that something is obliged 
to be set at the end of the avenue we are in, to moderate our 
bias, and make us enjoy the present being. Death serves to 
make us think, not of itself, but of what is about us. 

CHILDHOOD AND KNOWLEDGE. 

When children are in good health and temper, they have a 
sense of existence which seems too exquisite to last. It is made 
up of clearness of blood, freshness of perception, and trusting- 
ness of heart. We remember the time, when the green rails 
along a set of superb gardens used to fill us with a series of 
holiday and rural sensations perfectly intoxicating. According 
to the state of our health, we have sunny glimpses of this feel- 
ing still ; to say nothing of many other pleasures, which have 
paid us for many pains. The best time to catch them is early 
in the morning, at sunrise, out in the country. And we will 
here add, that life never perhaps feels such a return of fresh 
and young feeling upon it, as in early rising on a fine morning, 
whether in country or town. The healthiness of it, the quiet, 
the consciousness of having done a sort of young action (not to 



chap, li.] THOUGHTS ON HUMAN NATURE. 61 

add a wise one), and the sense of power it gives you over the 
coming day, produce a mixture of buoyancy and self-possession, 
which a sick man must not despair of, because he does not 
feei it the first morning. But even this reform should be adopted 
by degrees. The best way to recommend it is to begin with 
allowing fair play to the other side of the question. (See the 
article upon Getting up on Cold Mornings.) To return to our 
main point. After childhood comes a knowledge of evil, or a 
sophisticate and unhealthy mode of life ; or one produces the 
other, and both are embittered. Everything tells us to get back 
to a state of childhood — pain, pleasure, imagination, reason, 
passion, natural affection or piety, the better part of religion. 
If knowledge is supposed to be incompatible with it, knowledge 
would sacrifice herself, if necessary, to the same cause, for she 
also tells us to do so. But as a little knowledge first leads us 
away from happiness, so a greater knowledge may be destined 
to bring us back into a finer region of it. 

KNOWLEDGE AND UNHAPPINESS. 

It is not knowledge that makes us unhappy as we grow up, 
but the knowledge of unhappiness. Yet, as unhappiness existed 
when we knew it not, it becomes us all to be acquainted with it, 
that we may all have the chance of bettering the condition of 
our species. Who would say to himself, " I would be happy, 
though all my fellow-creatures were miserable ! " Knowledge 
must heal what it wounds, and extend the happiness which it 
has suspended. It must do by our comfort as a friend may do 
by one's books ; enrich it with its comments. One man grows 
up and gets unhealthy without knowledge ; another, with it. 
The former suffers and does not know why. He is unhappy, 
and he sees unhappiness, but he can do nothing for himself or 
others. The latter suffers and discovers why. He suffers even 
more because he knows more ; but he learns also how to diminish 
suffering in others. He learns, too, to apply his knowledge to his 
own case ; and he sees, that as he himself suffers from the 
world's want of knowledge, so the progress of knowledge would 
take away the world's sufferings and his own. The efforts to 



62 THE INDICATOR. [chap. m. 

this end worry him perhaps, and make him sickly ; upon which, 
thinking is pronounced to be injurious to health. And it may be 
so under these circumstances. What then, if it betters the 
health of the many 1 But thinking may also teach him how to 
be healthier. A game of cricket on a green may do for him 
what no want of thought would have done : while on the other 
hand, if he shows a want of thought upon these points, the infer- 
ence is easy ; he is not so thinking a man as you took him for. 
Addison should have got on horseback, instead of walking up 
and down a room in his house, with a bottle of wine at each end 
of it. Shakspeare divided his time between town and country, 
and in the latter part of his life, built, and planted, and petted 
his daughter Susanna. Solomon in his old age played the Ana- 
creon ; and with Milton's leave, " his wisest heart " was not so 
much out in this matter, as when his royal impatience induced 
him to say that everything was vanity. 

CHILDHOOD — OLD AGE OUR DESTINY. 

There appears to be something in the composition of humanity 
like what we have observed in that of music. The musician's 
first thought is apt to be his finest ; he must carry it on, and 
make a second part to his air ; and he becomes inferior. Nature 
in like manner (if we may speak it without profaneness) appears to 
succeed best in making childhood and youth. The symphony 
is a little perturbed ; but in what a sprightly manner the air sets 
off! What purity! What grace ! What touching simplicity ! 
Then comes sin, or the notion of it, and " breaks the fair music." 
Well did a wiser than the " wisest heart " bid us try and con- 
tinue children. But there are foolish as well as wise children, 
and it is a special mark of the former, whether little or grown, 
to affect manhood, and to confound it with cunning and violence. 
Do men die, in order that life and its freshness may be as often 
and as multitudinously renewed as possible ? Or do children 
grow old, that our consciousness may attain to some better mode 
of being through a rough path 1 Superstition answers only to 
perplex us, and make us partial. Nature answers nothing. But 
nature's calm and resolute silence tells us at once to hope for 



chap, li.] THOUGHTS ON HUMAN NATURE 63 

the future, and to do our best to enjoy the present. What if it 
is the aim of her workmanship to produce self-moving instru- 
ments, that may carry forward their own good 1 " A modest 
thought," you will say. Yet it is more allied to some doctrines 
celebrated for their humility, than you may suppose. Vanity, 
in speculations earnest and affectionate, is a charge to be made 
only by vanity. What has it to do with them ? 

ENDEAVOR. 

Either this world (to use the style of Marcus Antoninus) is 
meant to be what it is, or it is not. If it is not, then our en- 
deavors to render it otherwise are right : — if it is, then we must 
be as we are, and seek excitement through the same means, and 
our endeavors are still right. In either case, endeavor is good 
and useful ; but in one of them, the want of it must be a mis- 
take, 

GOOD AND EVIL. 

Nature is justified (to speak humanly) in the ordinary state 
of the world, granting it is never to be made better, because 
the sum of good, upon the whole, is greater than that of evil. 
For in the list of goods we are not only to rank all the more 
obvious pleasures which we agree to call such, but much that 
is ranked under the head of mere excitement, taking hope for 
the ground of it, and action for the means. But we have no 
right, on that account, to abstain from endeavoring to better the 
condition of our species, were it only for the sake of individual 
suffering. Nature, who is infinite, has a right to act in the 
gross. Nothing but an infinite suffering should make her stop ; 
and that should make her stop, were the individual who in* 
finitely suffered the only inhabitant of his hell. Heaven and 
earth should petition to be abolished, rather than that one such 
monstrosity should exist : it is the absurdest as well as most im- 
pious of all the dreams of fear. To suppose that a Divine Be- 
ing can sympathize with our happiness, is to suppose that he 
can sympathize with our misery • but to suppose that he can 



64 THE INDICATOR. [chap. li. 

sympathize with misery, and yet suffer infinite misery to exist, 
rather than put an end to misery and happiness together, is to 
contradict his sympathy with happiness, and to make him prefer 
a positive evil to a negative one, the existence of torment to the 
cessation of feeling. As nature, therefore, if considered at all, 
must be considered as regulated in her operations, through in- 
finite, we must look to fugitive suffering, as nature must guard 
against permanent ; she carves out our work for us in the gross : 
we must attend to it in the detail. To leave everything to her, 
would be to settle into another mode of existence, or stagnate 
into death. If it be said that she will take care of us at all 
events, we answer, first, that she does not do so in the ordinary 
details of life, neither earns our food for us, nor washes our 
bodies, nor writes our books ; secondly, that of things useful- 
looking and uncertain, she incites us to know the profit and pro- 
Lability ; and thirdly (as we have hinted in a previous observa- 
tion), that not knowing how far we may carry on the impulse 
of improvement, towards which she has given us a bias, it be- 
comes us on every ground, both of ignorance and wisdom, to 
try. 

DEGRADING IDEAS OF DEITY. 

The superstitious, in their contradictory representations of 
God, call him virtuous and benevolent out of the same passion 
of fear as induces them to make him such a tyrant. They 
think they shall be damned also, if they do not believe him the 
tyrant he is described : — they think they shall be damned also, 
if they do not gratuitously ascribe to him the virtues incompati- 
ble with damnation. Being so unworthy of praise, they think 
he will be particularly angry at not being praised. They shud- 
der to think themselves better; and hasten to make amends for 
it, by declaring themselves as worthless as he is worthy, 

GREAT DISTINCTION TO BE MADE IN BIGOTS. 

There are two sorts of religious bigots, the unhealthy and the 
unfeeling. The fear of the former is mixed with humanity, and 



chap, li,] THOUGHTS ON HUMAN NATURE. 65 

they never succeed in thinking themselves favorites of God, but 
their sense of security is embittered, by aversions which they 
dare not own to themselves, and terror for the fate of those who 
are not so lucky. The unfeeling bigot is a mere unimagina- 
tive animal, whose thoughts are confined to the snugness of his 
kennel, and who would have a good in the next world as well as 
in this. He secures a place in heaven as he does in the Man- 
chester coach. Never mind who suffers outside, woman or 
child. We once found ourselves by accident on board a Mar- 
gate hoy, which professed to " sail by Divine Providence. " 
Walking about the deck at night to get rid of the chillness 
which would occasionally visit our devotions to the starry hea- 
vens and the sparkling sea, our foot came in contact with some- 
thing white, which was lying gathered up in a heap. Upon 
stooping down, we found it to be a woman. The methodists had 
secured all the beds below, and were not to be disturbed. 

SUPERSTITION THE FLATTERER OF REASON. 

We are far from thinking that reason can settle everything. 
We no more think so, than that our eyesight can see into all 
existence. But it does not follow, that we are to take for 
granted the extremest contradictions of reason. Why should 
we ? We do not even think well enough of reason to do so. 
For here is one of the secrets of superstition. It is so angry at 
reason for not being able to settle everything, that it runs in 
dispair into the arms of irrationality. 

GOOD IN THINGS EVIL. 

" God Almighty ! 
There is a soul of goodness in things evil, 
Would men observingly distil it out !" 

So with equal wisdom and good-nature, does Shakspeare make 
one of his characters exclaim. Suffering gives strength to 
sympathy. Hate of the particular may have a foundation in 
love for the general. The lowest and most wilful vice may 
plunge deeper, out of a regret of virtue. Even in envy may 



66 THE INDICATOR. [chap, li. 

be discerned something of an instinct of justice, something of 
a wish to see fair play, and things on a level. — "But there is 
still a residuum of evil, of which we should all wish to get rid." 
— Well then, let us try. 

ARTIFICE OF EXAGGERATED COMPLAINT. 

Disappointment likes to make out bad to be worse, in order 
to relieve the gnawing of its actual wound. It would confuse 
the limits of its pain ; and by extending it too far, try to make 
itself uncertain how far it reached. 

CUSTOM, ITS SELF-RECONCILEMENTS AND CONTRADICTIONS. 

Custom is seen more in what we bear than what we enjoy. 
And yet a pain long borne so fits itself to our shoulders, that 
we do not miss even that without disquietude. The novelty of 
the sensation startles us. Montaigne, like our modern beaux, 
was uneasy when he did not feel himself braced up in his cloth- 
ing. Prisoners have been known to wish to go back to their 
prisons : invalids have missed the accompaniment of a gun-shot 
wound ; and the world is angry with reformers and innovators, 
not because it is in the right, but because it is accustomed to be 
in the wrong. This is a good thing, and shows the indestructi- 
ble tendency of nature to forego its troubles. But then re- 
formers and innovators must arise upon that very ground. To 
quarrel with them upon a principle of avowed spleen, is candid, 
and has a self-knowledge in it. But to resent them as imperti- 
nent or effeminate, is at bottom to quarrel with the principle of 
one's own patience, and to set the fear of moving above the 
courage of it. 

ADVICE. 

It has been well observed, that advice is not disliked because 
it is advice ; but because so few people know how to give it. 
Yet there are people vain enough to hate it in proportion to its 
very agreeableness. 



chap, n.] THOUGHTS ON HUMAN NATURE. 67 

HAPPINESS, HOW WE FOREGO IT. 

By the same reason for which we call this earth a vale of 
tears we might call heaven, when we got there, a hill of sighs ; 
for upon the principle of an endless progression of beatitude, 
we might find a still better heaven promised us, and this would 
be enough to make us dissatisfied with the one in possession. 
Suppose that we have previously existed in the planet Mars ; 
that there are no fields or trees there, and that we nevertheless 
could imagine them, and were in the habit of anticipating their 
delight in the next world. Suppose that there was no such 
thing as a stream of air, — as a wind fanning one's face for a 
summer's day. What a romantic thing to fancy ! What a 
beatitude to anticipate ! Suppose, above all, that there was no 
such thing as love. Words would be lost in anticipating that. 
" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," &c. Yet when we got to 
this heaven of green fields and fresh airs, we might take little 
notice of either for want of something more ; and even love we 
might contrive to spoil pretty odiously. 



THE INDICATOR. [chap. mi. 



CHAPTER LII. 

The Hamadryad.* 

An Assyrian, of the name of Rhsecus, observing a fine old oak- 
tree ready to fall with age, ordered it to be propped up. He 
was continuing his way through the solitary skirts of the place, 
when a female of more than human beauty appeared before 
him, with gladness in her eyes. " Rhascus," said she, " I am 
the Nymph of the tree which you have saved from perishing. 
My life is, of course, implicated in its own. But for you, my 
existence must have terminated ; but for you, the sap would 
have ceased to flow through its boughs, and the god-like essence 
I received from it to animate these veins. No more should I 
have felt the wind in my hair, the sun upon my cheeks, or 
the balmy rain upon my body. Now I shall feel them many 
years to come. Many years also will your fellow-creatures sit 
under my shade, and hear the benignity of my whispers, and 
repay me with their honey and their thanks. Ask what I can 
give you, Rhsecus, and you shall have it." 

The young man, who had done a graceful action but had 
not thought of its containing so many kindly things, received the 
praises of the Nymph with a due mixture of surprise and hom- 
age. He did not want courage, however ; and emboldened by 
her tone and manner, and still more by a beauty which had 
all the buxom bloom of humanity in it, with a preternatural 
gracefulness besides, he requested that she would receive him as 
a lover. There was a look in her face at this request answer- 
ing to modesty, but something still finer ; having no guilt, she 
seemed to have none of the common infirmities either of shame 
or impudence. In fine, she consented to reward Rhsecus as he 

* See the Scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius ; or the Mythology of Na- 
talis Comes. 



chap, in.] THE HAMADRYAD, ' 69 

wished ; and said she would send a bee to inform him of the 
hour of their meeting. 

Who now was so delighted as Rhsecus ! for he was a great 
admirer of the fair sex, and not a little proud of their admiring 
him in return ; and no human beauty, whom he had known, 
could compare with the Hamadryad. It must be owned, at the 
same time, that his taste for love and beauty was not of quite so 
exalted a description as he took it for. If he was fond of the 
fair sex, he was pretty nearly as fond of dice, and feasting, and 
any other excitement which came in his way ; and, unluckily, 
he was throwing the dice that very noon when the bee came to 
summon him. 

Rhsecus was at an interesting part of the game — so much so, 
that he did not at first recognize the object of the bee's hum- 
ming. " Confound this bee !" said he, " it seems plaguily fond 
of me." He brushed it away two or three times, but the busy 
messenger returned, and only hummed the louder. At last he 
bethought him of the Nymph ; but his impatience seemed to 
increase with his pride, and he gave the poor insect such a 
brush, as sent him away crippled in Both his thighs. 

The bee returned to his mistress as well as he could, and 
shortly after was followed by his joyous assailant, who came 
triumphing in the success of his dice and his gallantry. " I am 
here," said the Hamadryad. Rhsecus looked among the trees, 
but could see nobody. " I am here," said a grave sweet voice, 
" right before you." Rhsecus saw nothing. " Alas !" said she, 
66 Rhsecus, you cannot see me, nor will you see me more. I 
had thought better of your discernment and your kindness ; but 
you were but gifted with a momentary sight of me. You will 
see nothing in future but common things, and those sadly. You 
are struck blind to everything else. The hand that could strike 
my bee with a lingering death, and prefer the embracing of the 
dice-box to that of affectionate beauty, is not worthy of love and 
the green trees." 

The wind sighed off to a distance, and Rhsecus felt that he 
was alone. 



70 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liii. 



CHAPTER LIII. 

The Nurture of Triptolemus. 

Triptolemus was the son of Celeus, king of Attica, by his wife 
Polymnia. During his youth he felt such an ardor for know- 
ledge, and such a desire to impart it to his fellow-creatures, 
that, having but a slight frame for so vigorous a soul, and 
meeting with a great deal of jealousy and envy from those 
who were interested in being thought wiser, he fell into a wast- 
ing illness. His flesh left his bones ; his thin hands trembled 
when he touched the harp ; his fine warm eyes looked staringly 
out of their sockets, like stars that had slipped out of their places 
in heaven. 

At this period, an extraordinary and awful sensation struck, 
one night, through the streets of Eleusis. It was felt both by 
those who slept and those who were awake. The former 
dreamed great dreams ; the latter, especially the revellers and 
hypocrites who were pursuing their profane orgies, looked at 
one another, and thought of Triptolemus. As to Triptolemus 
himself, he shook in his bed with exceeding agitation ; but it 
was with a pleasure that overcame him like pain. He knew 
not how to account for it ; but he begged his father to go out 
and meet whatever was coming. He felt that some extraor- 
dinary good was approaching, both for himself and his fellow- 
creatures ; but revenge was never farther from his thoughts. 
What was he to revenge 1 Mistake and unhappiness ? He was 
too wise, too kind, and too suffering. " Alas !" thought he, " an 
unknown joy shakes me like a palpable sorrow ; and their 
minds are but as weak as my body. They cannot bear a touch 
they are not accustomed to." 

The king, his wife, and his daughters went out, trembling, 
though not so much as Triptolemus, nor with the same feeling. 



chap, mil] THE NURTURE OF TRIPTOLEMUS. 71 

There was a great light in the air, which moved gradually 
towards them, and seemed to be struck upwards from some- 
thing in the street. Presently, two gigantic torches appeared 
round the corner ; and underneath them, sitting in a car, and 
looking earnestly about, was a mighty female, of more than 
ordinary size and beauty. Her large black eyes, with her 
gigantic brows bent over them, and surmounted with a white 
forehead and a profusion of hair, looked here and there with an 
intentness and a depth of yearning indescribable. " Chaire, 
Demetre f" exclaimed the king in a loud voice: — "Hail, crea- 
tive mother l" He raised the cry common at festivals, when 
they imagined a deity manifesting itself; and the priests poured 
out of their dwellings, with vestment and with incense, which 
they held tremblingly aloft, turning down their pale faces from 
the gaze of the passing goddess. 

It was Ceres, looking for her lost daughter Proserpina. The 
eye of the deity seemed to have a greater severity in its ear- 
nestness, as she passed by the priests ; but at sight of a chorus 
of youths and damsels, who dared to lift up their eyes as well 
as voices, she gave such a beautiful smile as none but gods in 
sorrow can give ; and emboldened with this, the king and his 
family prayed her to accept their hospitality. 

She did so. A temple in the king's palace was her chamber, 
where she lay on the golden bed usually assigned to her image. 
The most precious fruits and perfumes burned constantly at the 
door ; and at first, no hymns were sung, but those of homage 
and condolence. But these the goddess commanded to be 
changed for happier songs. Word was also given to the city, 
that it should remit its fears and its cares, and show all the hap- 
piness of which it w r as capable before she arrived. "For," said 
she, " the voice of happiness arising from earth is a god's best 
incense. A deity lives better on the pleasure of what it has 
created, than in a return of a part of its gifts." 

Such were the maxims which Ceres delighted to utter during 
her abode at Eleusis, and which afterwards formed the essence 
of her renowned mysteries at that place. But the bigots, who 
adopted and injured them, heard them with dismay ; for they 
were similar to what young Triptolemus had uttered in the 



72 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liii. 

the aspirations of his virtue. The rest of the inhabitants gave 
themselves up to the joy, from which the divinity would only 
extract consolation. They danced, they wedded, they loved ; 
they praised her in hymns as cheerful as her natural temper ; 
thoy did great and glorious things for one another : never was 
Attica so full of delight and heroism : the young men sought 
every den and fearful place in the territory, to see if Proserpina 
was there ; and the damsels vied who should give them most 
kisses for their reward. " Oh Dearest and Divinest Mother !" 
sang the Eleusinians, as they surrounded the king's palace at 
night with their evening hymn, — " Oh greatest and best god- 
dess ! who not above sorrow thyself, art yet above all wish to 
inflict it, we know by this thou art indeed divine. Would that 
we might restore thee thy beloved daughter, thy daughter 
Proserpina, the dark, the beautiful, the mother-loving; whom 
some god less generous than thyself would keep for his own 
jealous doating. Would we might see her in thine arms ! We 
would willingly die for the sight ; would willingly die with the 
only pleasure which thou hast left wanting to us." 

The goddess would weep at these twilight hymns, consoling 
herself for the absence of Proserpina by thinking how many 
daughters she had made happy. Triptolemus shed weaker 
tears at them in his secret bed, but they were happier ones than 
before. " I shall die," thought he, " merely from the bitter- 
sweet joy of seeing the growth of a happiness which I must 
never taste ; but the days I longed for have arrived. Would 
that my father would only speak to the goddess, that my passage 
to the grave might be a little easier P 

The father doubted whether he should speak to the goddess. 
He loved his son warmly, though he did not well understand 
him ; and the mother, in spite of the deity's kindness, was 
afraid, lest in telling her of a child whom they were about to 
lose, they should remind her too forcibly of her own. Yet the 
mother, in an agony of alarm one day, at a fainting-fit of her 
son's, was the first to resolve to speak to her, and the king and 
she went and prostrated themselves at her feet. " What is this, 
kind hosts ?" said Ceres, " have ye, too, lost a daughter V 9 
" No ; but we shall lose a son," answered the parents, " but for 



chap, liii.] THE NURTURE OF TRIPTOLEMUS. 73 

the help of heaven." " A son !" replied Ceres, " why did you 
not tell me your son was living ? I had heard of him, and 
wished to see him ; but finding him not among ye, 1 fancied 
that he was no more, and I would not trouble you with such a 
memory. But why did you fear mine, when I could do good ? 
Did your son fear it ?" — " No, indeed," said the parents ; " he 
urged us to tell thee." — " He is the being I took him for," re- 
turned the goddess : " lead me to where he lies." 

They came to his chamber, and found him kneeling upon the 
bed, his face and joined hands bending towards the door. He 
had felt the -approach of the deity; and though he shook in every 
limb, it was a transport beyond fear that made him rise — it was 
love and gratitude. The goddess saw it, and bent on him a look 
that put composure into his feelings. " What wantest thou," 
said she, " struggler with great thoughts ?" " Nothing," an- 
swered Triptolemus, " if thou thinkest good, but a shorter and 
easier death." 

" What ! before thy task is done V « Fate," he replied, 
" seems to tell me that I am not fitted for my task, and it is 
more than done, since thou art here. I pray thee, let me die ; 
that I may not see every one around me weeping in the midst 
of joy, and yet not have strength enough left in my hands to 
wipe away their tears." " Not so, my child," said the goddess, 
and her grand harmonious voice had tears in it as she spoke ; 
" not so, Triptolemus ; for my task is thy task ; and gods work 
with instruments. Thou hast not gone through all thy trials 
yet ; but thou shalt have a better covering to bear them, yet still 
by degrees. Gradual sorrow, gradual joy." 

So saying, she put her hand to his heart and pressed it, and 
the agitation of his spirit was further allayed, though he re- 
turned to his reclining posture for weakness. From that time 
the bed of Triptolemus was removed into the temple, and Ceres 
became his second mother; but nobody knew how she nourished 
him. It was said that she summoned milk into her bosom, and 
nourished him at her immortal heart ; but he did not grow 
taller in stature, as men expected. His health was restored, 
his joints were knit again, and stronger than ever ; but he con- 
tinued the same small, though graceful youth, only the sicklier 



14 THE INDICATOR. [chap. m. 

particles which he had received from his parents withdrew their 
influence. 

At last, however, his very figure began to grow and expand. 
Up to this moment he had only been an interesting mortal, in 
whom the stoutest and best-made of his father's subjects recogniz- 
ed something mentally superior. Now, he began to look in per- 
son, as well as in mind, a demigod. The curiosity of the parents 
was roused at this appearance ; and it was heightened by the 
report of a domestic, who said, that in passing the door of the 
temple one night, she heard a sound as of a mighty fire. But 
their parental feelings were also excited by the behavior of 
Triptolemus, who while he seemed to rise with double cheerful- 
ness in the morning, always began to look melancholy towards 
night. For some hours before he retired to rest he grew silent, and 
looked more and more thoughtful, though nothing could be kinder 
in his manners to everybody, and the hour no sooner approached 
for his retiring, then he went instantly and even cheerfully. 

His parents resolved to watch ; they knew not what they were 
about, or they would have abstained, for Ceres was every night 
at her enchantments, to render their son immortal in essence as 
well as in fame, and interruption would be fatal. At midnight 
they listened at the temple door. 

The first thing they heard was the roaring noise of fire, as had 
been reported. It was deep and fierce. They were about to 
retire for fear ; but curiosity and parental feeling prevailed. 
They listened again ; but for some time heard nothing but the 
fire. At last a voice resembling their child's, gave a deep 
groan. "It was a strong trial, my son," said another voice, in 
which they recognized the melancholy sweetness of the goddess. 
" The grandeur and exceeding novelty of these visions," said the 
fainter voice, " press upon me, as though they would bear down 
my brain." " But they do not," returned the deity, " and they 
have not. I will summon the next." " Nay, not yet," rejoined 
the mortal ; "yet be it as thou wilt. I know what thou tellest 
me, great and kind mother." — " Thou dost know," said the god- 
dess, " and thou knowest in the very heart of thy knowledge, 
which is in the sympathy of it and the love. Thou seest that 
difference is not difference, and yet it is so • that the same is not 



chap, mil] THE NURTURE OF TRIPTOLEMUS. 75 

the same, and yet must be ; that what is, is but what we see, and 
as we see it ; and yet that all which we see, is. Thou shalt 
prove it finally ; and this is the last trial but one. Vision, come 
forth." A noise here took place, as of the entrance of some- 
thing exceedingly hurried and agonised, but which remained 
fixed with equal stillness. A brief pause took place, at the end 
of which the listeners heard their son speak, but in a voice of ex- 
ceeding toil and loathing, and as if he had turned away his head : 
— " It is," said he, gasping for breath, " utmost deformity," — 
" Only to thine habitual eyes, and when alone," said the goddess 
in a soothing manner ; " look again." " O my heart !" said the 
same voice, gasping, as if with transport, " they are perfect 
beauty and humanity." " There are only two of the same/' 
said the goddess, " each going out of itself. Deformity to the 
eyes of habit is nothing but analysis ; in essence it is nothing 
but one-ness, if such a thing there be. The touch and the re- 
sult is everything. See what a goddess knows, and see never- 
theless what she feels ; in this only greater than mortals, that 
she lives for ever to do good. Now comes the last and greatest 
trial ; now shalt thou see the real worlds as they are ; now 
shalt thou behold them lapsing in reflected splendor about the 
blackness of space ; now shalt thou dip thine ears into the mighty 
ocean of their harmonies, and be able to be touched with the 
concentrated love of the universe. Roar heavier, fire ; endure, 
endure, thou immortalising frame." " Yes, now, now/' said the 
other voice, in a superhuman tone, which the listeners knew not 
whether to think joy or anguish ; but they were seized with such 
alarm and curiosity, that they opened a place from which the 
priestess used to speak at the lintel, and looked in. The mother 
beheld her son, stretched with a face of bright agony, upon 
burning coals. She shrieked, and pitch darkness fell upon the 
temple. " A little while," said the mournful voice of the god- 
dess, " and heaven had had another life. O Fear ! what dost 
thou not do ! O ! my all but divine boy !" continued she, 
"now plunged again into physical darkness, thou canst not 
do good so long as thou wouldst have done ; but thou shalt have 
a life almost as long as the commonest sons of men, and a thou- 
sand times more useful and glorious. Thou must change away 



76 THE INDICATOR. [chap. L nt 

the rest of thy particles, as others do ; and in the process of time 
they may meet again under some nature worthy of thee, and 
give thee another chance for yearning into immortality ; but at 
present the pain is done, the pleasure must not arrive." 

The fright they had undergone slew the weak parents. Trip- 
tolemus, strong in body, cheerful to all in show, cheerful to him- 
self in many things, retained, nevertheless, a certain melancholy 
from his recollections, but it did not hinder him from sowing joy 
wherever he went. It incited him but the more to do so. The 
success of others stood him instead of his own. Ceres gave him 
the first seeds of the corn that makes bread, and sent him in her 
chariot round the world, to teach men how to use it. " I am not 
immortal myself," said he, " but let the good I do be so, and I 
shall yet die happy." 



chap, lit,] ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. 77 



CHAPTER LIV. 

On Commendatory Verses. 

If the faculties of the writer of these papers are anything at all, 
they are social ; and we have always been most pleased when 
we have received the approbation of those friends, whom we are 
most in the habit of thinking of when we write. There are mul- 
titudes of readers whose society we can fancy ourselves enjoying, 
though we have never seen them ; but we are more particularly apt 
to imagine ourselves in such and such company, according to the 
nature of our articles. We are accustomed to say to ourselves, 
if we happen to strike off anything that pleases us, — K. will like 
that : — There's something for M. or R. : — C. will snap his finger 
and slap his knee at this : — Here's a crow to pick for H. — Here 
N. will shake his shoulders : — There B., his head : — Here S. will 
shriek with satisfaction : — L. will see the philosophy of this joke, 
if nobody else does. — As to our fair friends, we find it difficult to 
think of them and our subject together. We fancy their counte- 
nances looking so frank and kind over our disquisitions, that we 
long to have them turned towards ourselves instead of the paper. 
Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, 
we have felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a 
writer, who, of all other men, knows how to extricate a common 
thing from commonness, and to give it an underlook of pleasant 
consciousness and wisdom. We knew him directly, in spite of 
his stars. His hand as well as heart betrayed him. 

TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR. 

Your easy Essays indicate a flow, 

Dear Friend, of brain, which we may elsewhere seek ; 

And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe, 

That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. 

Such observation, wit, and sense, are shown, 



78 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liv. 

We think the days of BickerstafT return' d ; 
And that a portion of that oil you own, 
In his undying midnight lamp which burn'd. 
I would not lightly bruise old Priscian's head, 
Or wrong the rules of grammar understood ; 
But, with the leave of Priscian be it said, 
The Indicative is your Potential Mood. 
Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator— 

H , your best title yet is Indicator. 

* * * * 

The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the 
good-natured countenance which men of genius, in all ages, have 
for the most part shown to contemporary writers ; and thence 
by a natural transition, of the generous friendship they have 
manifested for each other. Authors, like other men, may praise 
as well as blame for various reasons; for interest, for vanity, 
for fear : and for the same reasons they may be silent. But 
generosity is natural to the humanity and the strength of genius. 
Where it is obscured, it is usually from something that has ren- 
dered it misanthropical. Where it is glaringly deficient, the 
genius is deficient in proportion. And the defaulter feels as 
much, though he does not know it. He feels, that the least addi- 
tion to another's fame threatens to block up the view of his own. 

At the same time, praise by no means implies a sense of supe- 
riority. It may imply that we think it worth having ; but this 
may arise from a consciousness of our sincerity, and from a cer^. 
tain instinct we have, that to relish anything exceedingly gives us 
a certain ability to judge, as well as a right to express our admi- 
ration, of it. 

On all these accounts, we were startled to hear the other day 
that Shakspeare had never praised a contemporary author. We 
had mechanically given him credit for the manifestation of every 
generosity under the sun ; and we found the surprise affect us, 
not as authors (which would have been a vanity not even war- 
ranted by our having the title in common with him), but as men. 
What baulked us in Shakspeare seemed to baulk our faith in hu- 
manity. But we recovered as speedily. Shakspeare had none 
of the ordinary inducements, which make men niggardly of their 



chap, liv.] ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. 79 

commendation. He had no reason either to be jealous or afraid. 
He was the reverse of unpopular. His own claims were allowed. 
He was neither one who need be silent about a friend, lest he 
should be hurt by his enemy ; nor one who nursed a style or a 
theory by himself, and so was obliged to take upon him a monopoly 
of admiration in self-defence ; nor was he one who should gaze 
himself blind to everything else, in the complacency of his shallow- 
ness. If it should be argued, that he who saw through human 
nature was not likely to upraise it, we answer, that he who saw 
through it as Shakspeare did was the likeliest man in the world 
to be kind to it. Even Swift refreshed the bitterness of his mis- 
anthropy in his love for Tom, Dick, and Harry ; and what 
Swift did from impatience at not finding men better, Shakspeare 
would do out of patience in finding them so good. We instanced 
the sonnet in the collection called the Passionate Pilgrim, begin- 
ning 

If music and sweet poetry agree, 

in which Spenser is praised so highly. It was replied, tnat 
minute inquiries considered that collection as apocryphal. This 
set us upon looking again at the biographers who have criticised 
it ; and we see no reason, for the present, to doubt its authenti- 
city. For some parts of it we would answer upon internal evi- 
dence, especially, for instance, the Lover's Complaint. There 
are two lines in this poem which would alone announce him. 
They have the very trick of his eye : 

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies 
In the small orb of one particular tear ! 

But inquirers would have to do much more than disprove the 
authenticity of these poems, before they made out Shakspeare to 
be a grudging author. They would have to undo the modesty 
and kindliness of his other writings. They would have to undo 
his universal character for " gentleness," at a time when gentle 
meant all that was noble as well as mild. They would have to 
deform and to untune all that round, harmonious mind, which a 
great contemporary described as the very " sphere of humanity ;" 



80 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liv. 

to deprive him of the epithet given him in the school of Milton, 
" unvulgar ;"* to render the universality of wisdom liable to the 
same drawbacks as the mere universality of science ; to take 
the child's heart out of the true man's body ; to un-Shakspeare 
Shakspeare. If Shakspeare had never mentioned a contempo- 
rary in his life, nor given so many evidences of a cordial and 
admiring sense of those about him, we would sooner believe that 
sheer modesty had restrained his tongue, than the least approach 
to a petty feeling. We can believe it possible that he may have 
thought his panegyrics not wanted ; but unless he degraded 
himself wilfully, in order to be no better than any of his fellow- 
creatures, we cannot believe it possible that he would have 
thought his panegyrics desired, and yet withheld them. 

It is remarkable that one of the most regular contributors of 
Commendatory Verses in the time of Shakspeare, was a man 
whose bluntness of criticism and feverish surliness of manners 
have rendered the most suspected of a jealous grudgingness ; — 
Ben Jonson. We mean not to detract from the good-heartedness 
which we believe this eminent person to have possessed at bottom, 
when we say, that as an excess of modest confidence in his own 
generous instincts might possibly have accounted for the sparing- 
ness of panegyric in our great dramatist, so a noble distrust of 
himself, and a fear lest jealousy should get the better of his in- 
stincts, might possibly account for Ben Jonson's tendency to dis- 
tribute his praises around him. If so, it shows how useful such 
a distrust is to one's ordinary share of humanity ; and how much 
safer it will be- for us, on these as well as all other occasions, to 
venture upon likening ourselves to Ben Jonson than to Shak- 
speare. It is to be recollected at the same time, that Ben Jon- 
son, in his old age, was the more prominent person of the two, 
as a critical bestower of applause ; that he occupied the town- 
chair of wit and scholarship ; and was in the habit of sanction- 
ing the pretensions of new authors by a sort of literary adoption, 
calling them his " sons," and " sealing them of the tribe of 
Ben." There was more in him of the aristocracy and heraldry 

* By Milton's nephew Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum. It is an 
epithet given in all the spirit which it attributes. 



chap, liv.] ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. 81 

of letters, than in Shakspeare, who, after all, seems to have been 
careless of fame himself, and to have written nothing during the 
chief part of his life but plays, which he did not print. Ben Jon- 
son, among other panegyrics, wrote high and affectionate ones 
upon Drayton, William Browne, Fletcher and Beaumont. His 
verses to the memory of Shakspeare are a noble monument to 
both of them. The lines to Beaumont in answer for some of 
which we have formerly quoted, we must repeat. They are 
delightful for a certain involuntary but manly fondness, and for 
the candor with which he confesses the joy he received from 
such commendation. 

How do I love thee. Beaumont, and thy Muse 
That unto me doth such religion use ! 
How do I fear myself, that am not worth 
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth ! 
At once thou mak'st me happy, and unmak'st: 
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st ! 
What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves ? 
Whet art is thine, that so thy friend deceives ? 
When even there, where most thou praisest me, 
For writing better, I must envy thee. 

Observe the good effect which the use of the word " religion " has 
here, though somewhat ultra-classical and pedantic. A certain 
pedantry, in the best sense of the term, was natural to the 
author, and throws a grace on his most natural moments. 

There is great zeal and sincerity in Ben Jonson's lines to 
Fletcher, on the ill-success of his Faithful Shepherdess ; but we 
have not room for them. 

Beaumo" t's are still finer; and indeed furnish a complete 
specimen of his wit and sense, as well as his sympathy with his 
friend. His indignation against the critics is more composed 
and contemptuous. His uppermost feeling is confidence in his 
friend's greatness. The reader may here see what has always 
been thought by men of genius, of people who take the ipse dixits 
of the critics. After giving a fine sense of the irrepressible 
thirst for writing in a poet, he says, 

Yet wi h I those whom I for friends have known, 
To sir .; their thoughts to no ears but their own. 
7 



82 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liv. 

Why should the man, whose wit ne'er had a stain, 
Upon the public stage present his vein, 
And make a thousand men in judgment sit, 
To call in question his undoubted wit, 
Scarce two of which can understand the laws 
Which they should judge by, nor the party's cause ? 
Among the rout there is not one that hath 
In his own censure an explicit faith. 
One company, knowing they judgment lack, 
Ground their belief on the next man in black ; 
Others, on him that makes signs, and is mute ; 
Some like as he does in the fairest suit ; 
He as his mistress doth, and she by chance : 
Nor want there those, who as the boy doth dance 
Between the acts, will censure the whole play ; 
Some if the wax-lights be not new that day: 
But multitudes there are whose judgment goes 
Headlong according to the actor's clothes. 
For this, these public things and I, agree 
So ill, that but to do a right for thee, 
I had not been persuaded to have hurl'd 
These few, ill-spoken lines, into the world, 
Both to be read, and censured of, by those, 
Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose. 

One of the finest pieces of commendatory verse is Sir Waited 
Raleigh's upon the great poem of Spenser. He calls it " A 
Vision upon the Faery Queen." 

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay, 
Within that temple where the vestal flame 
Was wont to burn : and passing by that way 
To see that buried dust of living fame, 
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept, 
All suddenly I saw the Faery Queen : 
At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept, 
And from thenceforth those graces were not seen 
(For they this Queen attended) ; in whose stead 
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse, 
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed, 
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did perse, 
Where Homer's sprite did tremble all for grief, 
And curst th' access of that celestial thief. 

This is highly imaginative and picturesque. We fancy our- 



chap, liv.] ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. 83 

selves in one of the most beautiful places of Italian sepulture — 
quiet and hushing — looking upon a tomb of animated sculpture. 
It is the tomb of the renowned Laura. We feel the spirit of 
Petrarch present, without being visible. The fair forms of Love 
and Virtue keep watch over the marble. All on a sudden, from 
out the dusk of the chapel door, the Faery Queen is beheld ap- 
proaching the tomb. The soul of Petrarch is heard weeping ; — 
an intense piece of fancy, which affects one like the collected 
tears and disappointment of living humanity. Oblivion lays him 
down on the tomb ; 

And from thenceforth those graces were not seen. 

The other marbles bleed at this : the ghosts of the dead groan : 
and the very spirit of Homer is felt to tremble. It is a very 
grand and high sonnet, worthy of the dominant spirit of the wri- 
ter. One of its beauties, however, is its defect ; if defect it be, 
and not rather a fine instance of the wilful. Comparisons be- 
tween great reputations are dangerous, and are apt to be made too 
much at the expense of one of them, precisely because the author 
knows he is begging the question. Oblivion has laid him down 
neither on Laura?s hearse nor the Faery Queen's ; and Raleigh 
knew he never would. But he wished to make out a case for 
his friend, in the same spirit in which he pushed his sword 
into a Spanish settlement and carried all before him. 

The verses of Andrew Marvell prefixed to Paradise Lost, be- 
ginning, 

Where I beheld the poet, blind, yet bold, 

are well known to every reader of Milton, and justly admired 
by all who know what they read. We remember how delighted 
we were to find who Andrew Marvell was, and that he could 
be pleasant and lively as well as grave. Spirited and worthy 
as this panegyric is, the reader who is not thoroughly acquainted 
with Marvell 's history, does not know all its spirit and worth. 
That true friend and excellent patriot stuck to his old acquaint- 
ance at a period when canters and time-servers had turned 
their backs upon him, and when they would have made the very 



S4 THE INDICATOR. [chap liv. 

knowledge of him, which they had had the honor of sharing, the ruin 
of those that put their desertion to the blush. There is a noble 
burst of indignation on this subject, in Mar veil's prose works, 
against a fellow of the name of Parker, who succeeded in obtain- 
ing a bishopric. Parker seems to have thought that Marvell 
would have been afraid of acknowledging his ola acquaintance ; 
but so far from resembling the bishop in that or any other par- 
ticular, he not only publicly proclaimed and gloried in the friend- 
ship of the poet, but reminded Master Parker that he had once 
done the same. 

We must be cautious how we go on quoting verses. upon this 
agreeable subject ; for they elbow one's prose out at a great rate. 
They sit in state, with a great vacancy on each side of them, 
like Henry the Eighth in a picture of Holbein's. The wits who 
flourished in the time of the Stuarts and Queen Anne were not 
behind the great poets of the age of Elizabeth, in doing justice 
to their contemporaries. Dryden hailed the appearance of Con- 
greve and Oldham. Congreve's merits were universally ac- 
knowledged except by the critics. We need not refer to the 
works of Pope, Gay, Steele, Prior, &c. If Swift abused Dry- 
den (who is said to have told him he would never be a poet), he 
also abused in a most unwarrantable and outrageous manner Sir 
Richard Steele, for whose Taller he had written. His abuse 
was not a thing of literary jealousy, but of some personal or 
party spite. The union of all three was a perfection of con- 
sciousness, reserved for the present time. But Swift's very 
fondness vented itself, like Buonaparte's, in slaps of the cheek. 
He was morbid, and liked to create himself cause for pity or 
regret. " The Dean was a strange man." According to Mrs. 
Pilkington, he would give her a pretty hard thump now and 
then, of course to see how amiably she took it. Upon the same 
principle, he tells us in the verses on his death, that 

Friend Pope will grieve a month, and Gay 
A week, and Arbuthnot a day. 

This was to vex them, and make them prove his words false by- 
complaining of their injustice. He himself once kept a letter 
unopened for some days, because he was afraid it contained 



chap, ut.] *0N COMMENDATORY VERSES. S5 

news of a friend's death. See how he makes his very coarseness 
and irritability contribute to a panegyric : — 

When Pope shall in one couplet fix 
More sense than I can do in six, 
It gives me such a jealous fit, 
I cry, " Pox take him and his wit !" 

We must finish our quotations with a part of some sprightly 
verses addressed to Garth on his Dispensary, by a friend of the 
name of Codrington. Codrington was one of those happily- 
tempered spirits, who united the characters of the gentleman, the 
wit, and the man of business. He was, in the best sense of the 
word, "A person of wit and honor about town."' 

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword. 

He was bom in Barbadoes, and after residing some time in 
England, and serving with great gallantry as an officer in various 
parts of the world, became Governor-General of the Leeward 
Islands. He resigned his government in the course of a few 
years, and died in Barbadoes in the midst of his favorite studies. 
Among the variety of his accomplishments he did not omit divi- 
nity ; and he was accounted a master of metaphysics. His 
public life he had devoted to his country; his private he divided 
among his books and friends. If the verses before us are not so 
good as those of the old poets they are as good in their way, are 
as sincere and cordial, and smack of the champagne on his table. 
We like them on many accounts, for we like the panegyrist, and 
have an old liking for his friend — we like the taste they express 
in friendship and in beauty ; and we like to fancy that our good- 
humored ancestors in Barbadoes enjoyed the Governor's society, 
and relished their wine with these identical triplets. 

TO MY FE.IEND THE AUTHOR, DESIRING MY OPINION OF HIS POEM. 

Ask me not, friend, what I approve or blame ; 
Perhaps I know not what I like or damn : 
I can be pleased, and I dare own I am. 

I read thee over with a lover's eye ; 

Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy ; 

Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I. 



86 THE INDICATOR - [chap. liv. 

Critics and aged beaux of fancy chaste, 
Who ne'er had fire, or else whose fire is past, 
Must judge by rules what they want force to taste. 

I would a poet, like a mistress, try, 

Not by her hair, her hand, her nose, her eye ; 

But by some nameless power to give me joy. 

The nymph has Grafton's, Cecil's, Churchill's charms, 

If with resistless fires my soul she warms, 

With balm upon her lips, and raptures in her arms. 

Literary loves and jealousies were much the same in other 
ages as the present ; but we have a great deal more of the 
loves than the reverse ; because genius survives, and ignorance 
does not. The ancient philosophers had a delicate way of honor- 
ing their favorites, by inscribing treatises with their names. It 
is thought a strange thing to Xenophon that he never mentions 
Plato. The greater part of the miscellaneous poetry of the 
Greeks is lost ; or we should doubtless see numerous evidences 
of the intercourse of their authors. The Greek poets of Sicily, 
Theocritus and Moschus, are affectionate in recording the merits 1 
of their contemporaries. Varius and Gallus, two eminent Ro- 
man poets, scarcely survive but in the panegyrics of their contem- 
poraries. Dante notices his, and his predecessors. Petrarch 
and Boccaccio publicly honored, as they privately loved one an- 
other. Tasso, the greatest poet of his time, was also the great- 
est panegyrist ; and so, as might be expected, was Ariosto. 
The latter has introduced a host of his friends by name, male 
and female, at the end of his great work, coming down to the 
shores of poetry to welcome him home after his voyage. There 
is a pleasant imitation of it by Gay, applied to Pope's conclusion 
of Homer. Montaigne, who had the most exalted notions of 
friendship, which he thought should have everything in com- 
mon, took as much zeal in the literary reputation of his friends, 
as in everything else that concerned them. The wits of 
the time of Henry the Fourth, of Louis the Fourteenth, and 
of Louis the Fifteenth, — Malherbe, Racan, Corneille, Moliere, 
Racine, Chaulieu, La Fare, D'Alembert, Voltaire, &c, not ex- 
cepting Boileau, where he was personally intimate with a 



chap, uv.] ON COMMENDATORY VERSES. 87 

brother author — all do honor in this respect to the sociality of 
their nation. It is the same, we believe, with the German writ- 
ers ; and if the Spanish winced a little under the domination of 
Lope de Vega, they were chivalrous in giving him perhaps more 
than his due. Camoens had the admiration of literary friends as 
poor as himself, if he had nothing else ; but this was something. 



5S THE INDICATOR. [chap. lv. 



CHAPTER LV. 

A Word upon Indexes. 

Index-making has been held to be the driest as well as the low- 
est species of writing. We shall not dispute the humbleness of 
it ; but since we have had to make an index ourselves,* we have 
discovered that the task need not be so very dry. Calling to 
mind indexes in general, we found them presenting us a variety 
of pleasant memories and contrasts. We thought of those to 
the Spectator, which we used to look at so often at school, for 
the sake of choosing a paper to abridge. We thought of the 
index to the Pantheon of Fabulous Histories of the Heathen 
Gods, which we used to look at oftener. We remember how we 
imagined we should feel some day, if ever our name should 
appear in the list of Hs ; as thus, Home, Howard, Hume, Hu- 

niades, . The poets would have been better, but then the 

names, though perhaps less unfitting, were not so flattering ; as 

for instance, Halifax, Hammond, Harte, Hughes, . We 

did not like to come after Hughes. 

We have just been looking at the indexes to the Taller and 
Spectator, and never were more forcibly struck with the feeling 
we formerly expressed about a man's being better pleased with 
other writers than with himself. Our index seemed the poorest 
and most second-hand thing in the world after theirs ; but let 
any one read theirs, and then call an index a dry thing if he can. 
As there " is a soul of goodness in things evil/' so there is a soul 
of humor in things dry, and in things dry by profession. Law- 
yers know this, as well as index-makers, or they would die of 
sheer thirst and aridity. But as grapes, ready to burst with 
wine, issue out of the most stony places, like jolly fellows bring- 
ing Burgundy out of a cellar ; so an index, like the Tatler's, 

* To the original edition of the Indicator. 



chap, lv.] A WORD UPON INDEXES. 89 

often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humor, for in- 
stance, — 

" BickerstafF, Mr., account of his ancestors, 141. How his 
race was improved, 142. Not in partnership with Lillie, 250. 
Catched writing nonsense, 47. 

" Dead men, who are to be so accounted, 247." 

Sometimes he has a stroke of pathos, as touching in its brevity 
as the account it refers to ; as, 

" Love-letters between Mr. BickerstafF and Maria, 184 — 186. 
Found in a grave, 289." 

Sometimes he is simply moral and graceful ; as, 

" Tenderness and humanity inspired by the Muses, 258. No 
true greatness of mind without it, ibid." 

At another he says perhaps more than he intended ; as, 

'•'Laura, her perfections and excellent character, 19. De- 
spised by her husband, ibid." 

The index to Cotton's Montaigne, probably written by the trans- 
lator himself, is often pithy and amusing. Thus in volume 2d, 

" Anger is pleased with, and flatters itself, 618. 

* Beasts inclined to avarice, 225. 

" Children abandoned to the care and government of their 
fathers, 613. 

"Drunkenness, to a high and dead degree, 16. 

" Joy, profound, has more severity than gaiety in it. 

" Monsters, are not so to God, 612. 

" Voluptuousness of the Cynics, 418." 

Sometimes we meet with graver quaintnesses and curious re- 
lations, as in the index to Sandys's Ovid : 

" Diana, no virgin, scoft at by Lucian, p. 55. 

" Dwarfes, an Italian Dwarfe carried about in a parrot's cage, 

113. 

" Eccho, at Twilleries in Paris, heard to repeat a verse without 
failing in one syllable, p. 58. 

" Ship of the Tyrrhenians miraculously stuck fast in the sea, 
p. 63. 

" A Historie of a Bristol ship stuck fast in the deepe Sea by 
Witchcraft ; for which twentie-five Witches were executed, 
ibid." 



90 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lvi. 



CHAPTER LVI. 

An Old School-Book. 

There is a school-book by the egregious John Amos Comenius, 
(who fixed the millenium for the year 1672) in which the learned 
author has lumped together, in a very singular way, all sorts of 
trades, pursuits, productions, merriments, and disasters. As 
everything which is -saleable is on a level with booksellers, so 
everything which has a Latin word for it, was alike important 
to the creator of the Or his Pictus : for so the book is called. 

He sees with equal eye, as construing all, 
A hero perish or a sparrow fall. 

The tormenting of Malefactors, Supplicia Malefactorum, is no 
more in his eyes than the making of honey, or Mellificium. 
Shipwreck, being Naufragium, he holds in no graver liglit 
than a feast, which is Convivium ; and the feast is no merrier 
than the shipwreck. He has wood-cuts, with numerals against 
the figures ; to which the letter-press refers. In one of these, 
his " Deformed and Monstrous People" cut as jaunty a figure 
as his Adam and Eve, and seem to pique themselves on their 
titles of Deformes et Monstrosi. In another the soul of man is 
described by a bodily outline, standing against a sheet. He is 
never moved but by some point of faith. Thus, " Godliness," 
he says, "treads reason under foot, that barking dog, No. 6." 
Oblatrantem Canem, 6. The translation, observe, is worthy of 
the original. Again : — 



Woe to the mad 
Wizards and Witches, 
who give themselves to the Devil 
(being inclosed in a Circle, 7. 
calling upon him 
with Charms) 
they dally with him 
and fall from God ! 

for they shall receive their t nam cum illo 

reward with him. ; mercedem accipient 



Vae dementibus 
Magis et Lamiis, 
qui Cacodsemoni se dedunt 
(inclusi Circulo, 7. 
eum advocantes 
incantamentis) 
cum eo colludunt 
et a Deo deficiunt ! 



CHAP. LVI.] 



AN OLD SCHOOL-BOOK. 



91 



But of the fall of Adam and Eve he contents himself with 
this pithy account : 



These being tempted 
by the Devil under the shape 
of a serpent, 3. 
when they had eaten of the 
fruit of the forbidden Tree, 4. 
were condemned (Five). 
to misery and death, 
with all their posterity, 
and cast out of Paradise, 6. 



Hi, seducti 
a Diabolo sub specie 
Serpentis, 3. 
cum comederunt 
de fructu vetitae Arboris, 4. 
damnatisunt, 5. 
ad miseriam et mortem, 
cum omni posteritate sua, 
et ejecti e Paradiso, 6. 



Opposite to this, is the account of fish : 



Add Herrings, 7. 
which are brought pickled, 
and Plaice, 8. and Cod, 9. 
which are brought dry ; 
and the sea-monsters, &{C. 



Adde Haleces, 7. 
qui salsi, 

et Passeres, 8. cum Asellis, { 
qui adferuntur arefacti ; 
et monsfra marina, &c. 



Of a similar aspect of complacency is his account of the Last 
Judgment : 



When the Godly and elect, 4. 
shall enter into life eternal, 
into the place of Bliss, 
and the new Jerusalem, 5. 
But the wicked 
and the damned, 6. 
with the Devils, 7. 
shall be thrust into Hell. (No. 8.) 
to be there tormented for ever. 



Ubi pii ( justi) et electi, 4. 
introibunt in vitam eternam, 
in locum Beatitudinis, 
et novam Hierosolymam, 5. 
Impii vero 
et damnati, 6. 
cum Cacodaemonibus, 7. 
in Gehennam, 8. detrudentur, 
ibi cruciandi aeternum. 



The Shipwreck ends genteelly : 



Some escape, 
either on a plank, 7. 
and by swimming, 
or in a Boat ; 8. 
Part of the Wares, 
with the dead folks, 
is carried out of the sea, 9. 
upon the shores. 



Quidam evadunt, 
vel tabula, 7. 
ac enatando, 
vel Scapha; 8. 
Pars Mercium 
cum mortuis 
a Mari, 9. in littora defertur. 



So in the Tormenting of Malefactors, he speaks of torture in 
a parenthesis, and talks of pulling traitors in pieces in the style 



92 



THE INDICATOR. 



[chap. lvi. 



of a nota-bene. " They that have their life given them " appear 
to be still worse off. 



Malefactors, 1. 

are brought 

from the Prison, 3. 

(where they were wont to be 

tortured) by Serjeants, 2. 

Some, before they are executed, 

have their Tongues cut out, 11. 

or have their Hand, 12. 

cut off upon a Block, 13. 

or are burnt with Pincers, 14 

They that have their Life 

given them, 

are set on the pillory, 16. 

are strapado'd, 17. 

are set upon a Wooden Horse, IS. 

have their ears cut off, 19. 

are whipped with Rods, 20. 

are branded, * 

are banished, 

are condemned 

to the Galleys, 

or to peroetual Imprisonment. 



Traitors are pulled in pieces 
with four Horses. 



Malefici, 1. 

producuntur, 

e Carcere, 3. 

(ubi torqueri solent) 

per Licteres, 2. 

Quid am antequam supplicic 

afflciantur eliguantur, 11. 

aut plectuntur Manu, 12. 

super cippum, 13. 

aut Forcipibus, 14. uruntur. 

Vita donati 

constringuntur Numeleis, 1G. 

luxantur, 17. 

imponuntur Equuleo, IS. 

truncatus Auribus, 19. 

cEeduntur Virgis, 20. 

stigmate notantur, 

relegantur, 

damnantur 

ad Triremes, 

vel ad Carcerem perpetuam^ 



Perduelles discerpuntur 
quadrigis. 



chap, lvii.1 OF DREAMS. 93 



CHAPTER LVII. 

Of Dreams. 

The materialists and psychologists are at Tissue upon the subject 
of dreams. The latter hold them to be one among the many 
proofs of the existence of a soul : the former endeavor to account 
for them upon principles altogether corporeal. We must own, 
that the effect of their respective arguments, as is usual with us 
on these occasions, is not so much to satisfy us with either, as to 
dissatisfy us with both. The psychologist, with all his struggles, 
never appears to be able to get rid of his body ; and the material- 
ist leaves something extremely deficient in the vivacity of his 
proofs, by his ignorance of that primum mobile, which is the soul 
of everything. In the mean time, while they go on with their 
laudable inquiries (for which we have a very sincere respect), it 
is our business to go on recommending a taste for results, as well 
as causes, and turning everything to account in this beautiful 
star of ours, the earth. There is no reason why the acutest 
investigator of mysteries should not enjoy his existence, and have 
his earthly dreams made as pleasant as possible ; and for our parts, 
we see nothing at present, either in body or soul, but a medium 
for a world of perceptions, the very unpleasantest of whose 
dreams are but warnings to us how we depart from the health 
and natural piety of the pleasant ones. 

Wnat seems incontrovertible in the case of dreams is, that they 
are most apt to take place when the body is most affected. They 
seem to turn most upon us when the suspension of the will has 
been reduced to its most helpless state by indulgence. The door 
of the fancy is left without its keeper, and forth issue, pell-mell, 
the whole rout of ideas or images, which had been stored within 
the brain, and kept to their respective duties. They are like a 
tclool let loose, or the winds in Virgil, or Lord Anson's drunken 



94 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lvii. 

sailors at Panama, who dressed themselves up in all sorts of 
ridiculous apparel. 

We were about to say, that being writers, we are of necessity- 
dreamers ; for thinking disposes the bodily faculties to be more 
than usually affected by the causes that generally produce 
dreaming. But extremes appear to meet on this, as on other 
occasions, at least as far as the meditative power is concerned ; 
for there is an excellent reasoner now living, who telling another 
that he was not fond of the wilder parts of the Arabian Nights, 
was answered with great felicity, " Then you never dream." It 
turned out that he really dreamt little. Here the link is impaired 
that connects a tendency to indigestion with thinking on the one 
hand, and dreaming on the other. If we are to believe Herodo- 
tus, the Atlantes, an African people, never dreamt ; which Mon- 
taigne is willing to attribute to their never having eaten anything 
that died of itself. It is to be presumed that he looked upon their 
temperance as a matter of course. The same philosopher, who 
was a deep thinker, and of a delicate constitution, informs us that 
he himself dreamt but sparingly ; but then when he did, his 
dreams were fantastic, though cheerful. This is the very triumph 
of the animal spirits, to unite the strangeness of sick dreams 
with the cheerfulness of healthy ones. To these exceptions 
against the usual theories we may add, that dreams are by no 
means modified of necessity by what the mind has been occupied 
with in the course of the day, or even of months ; for, during 
our two years' confinement in prison, we did not dream more 
than twice of our chief subjects of reflection, the prison itself 
not* excepted.* The two dreams were both connected with the 
latter, and both the same. We fancied that we had slipped out 
of the jail, and gone to the theatre, where we were horrified by 
seeing the faces of the whole audience unexpectedly turned 
upon us. 

It is certain enough, however, that dreams in general proceed 
from indigestion ; and it appears nearly as much so, that they 

* See a remarkable coincidence in the Essay on Dreams, in Mr. Hazlitt's 
Plain Speaker. 



chap, lvii.] OF DREAMS. 95 

are more or less strange according to the waking fancy of the 
dreamer. 

All dreams, as in old Galen I have read, 

Are from repletion and complexion bred, 

From rising fumes of indigested food, 

And noxious humors that infect the blood. 

— When choler overflows, then dreams are bred 

Of flames, and all the family of red. 

— Choler adust congeals the blood with fear, 

Then black bulls toss us, and black devils tear. 

In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound, 

With rheums oppress'd, we sink, in rivers drown'd. 

Dryden's Cock and the Fox, from Chaucer. 

Again, in another passage, which is worth quoting instead of the 
original, and affords a good terse specimen of the author's ver- 
sification : — 

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes ; 
When Monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; 
Compounds a medley of disjointed things, 
A mob of cobblers and a court of kings : * 
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad : 
Both are the reasonable soul run mad ; 
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see, 
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be. 
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind, 
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind. 
The nurse's legends are for truths received, 
And the man dreams but what the boy believed ; 
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play, J 

The night restores our actions done by day, > 

As hounds in sleep will open for their prey. 3 

In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece, 
Chimeras all ; and more absurd or less. 

It is probable that a trivial degree of indigestion will give rise 
to very fantastic dreams in a fanciful mind ; while, on the other 
hand, a good orthodox repletion is necessary towards a fanciful 

* Perhaps a misprint for 

A court of cobblers and a mob of kings. 



96 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lvit. 

creation in a dull one. It shall make an epicure, of any vivacity, 
act as many parts in his sleep, as a tragedian, " for that night 
only." The inspirations of veal, in particular, are accounted 
extremely Delphic ; Italian pickles partake of the same spirit 
as Dante ; and a butter-boat should contain as many ghosts as 
Charon's. 

There is a passage in Lucian, which would have made a good 
subject for those who painted the temptations of the saints. It is 
a description of the City of Dreams, very lively and crowded. 
We quote after Natalis Comes, not having the True History by 
us. The city, we are told, stands in an immense plain, sur- 
rounded by a thick forest of tall poppy-trees, and enormous 
mandragoras. The plain is also full of all sorts of somniculous 
plants, and the trees are haunted with multitudes of owls and 
bats, but no other bird. The city is washed by the River Lethe, 
called by others the Night-bringer, whose course is inaudible, 
and like the flowing of oil. (Spenser's follower, Browne, has 
been here : 

Where consort none other fowl, 
Save the bat and sullen owl ; 
Where flows Lethe without coil, 
Softly, like a stream of oil. 

Inner Temple Mask.) 

There are two gates to the city : one of horn, in which almost 
everything that can happen in sleep is represented, as in a trans- 
parency ; the other of ivory, in which the dreams are but dimly 
shadowed. The principal temple is that of Night ; and there are 
others, dedicated to Truth and Falsehood, who have oracles. The 
population consists of Dreams, who are of an infinite variety of 
shape. Some are small and slender : others distorted, humped, 
and monstrous ; others proper and tall, with blooming good- 
tempered faces. Others ; again, have terrible countenances, are 
winged, and seem eternally threatening the city with some cala- 
mity ; while others walk about in the pomp and garniture of kings. 
If any mortal comes into the place, there is a multitude of domestic 
Dreams, who meet him with offers of service ; and they are 
followed by some of the others, that bring him good or bad news, 



chap lvii.] OF DREAMS. 



generally false ; for the inhabitants of that city are, for the 
most part, a lying and crafty generation, speaking one thing and 
thinking another. This is having a new advantage over us. 
Only think of the mental reservation of a Dream ! 

If Lucian had divided his city into ranks and denominations, 
he might possibly have classed them under the heads of Dreams 
Lofty, Dreams Ludicrous, Dreams Pathetic, Dreams Horrible, 
Dreams Bodily Painful or Pleasant, Dreams of Common Life, 
Dreams of New Aspects of Humanity, Dreams Mixed, Fan- 
tastic, and Utterly Confused. He speaks of winged ones, which 
is judicious, for they are very common ; but unless Natalis 
Comes, who is not a very bright person, misrepresents him, he 
makes them of the melancholy class, which, in general, they 
are not. 

In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound. 

Nothing is more common, or usually more pleasant, than to dream 
of flying. It is one of the best specimens of the race ; for, be- 
sides being agreeable, it is made up of the dreams of ordinary 
life, and those of surprising combination. Thus the dreamer 
sometimes thinks he is flying in unknown regions, sometimes 
skimming only a few inches above the ground, and wondering he 
never did it before. He will even dream that he is dreaming 
about it ; and yet is so fully convinced of its feasibility, and so 
astonished at his never having hit upon so delightful a truism, 
that he is resolved to practise it the moment he wakes. " One 
has only," says he, "to give a little spring with one's foot, so, — 
and oh ! it's the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. I'll 
always skim hereafter." We dreamt once that a woman set up 
some Flying Rooms, as a person does a tavern. We went to 
try them, and nothing could be more satisfactory and common- 
place on all sides. The landlady welcomed us with a curtsey, 
hoped for friends and favors, &c, and then showed us into a 
spacious room, not round, as might be expected, but long, and 
after the usual dining fashion. " Perhaps, sir," said she, " you 
would like to try the room." Upon which we made no more 
ado, but sprung up and made two or three genteel circuits; now 



98 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lvii. 

taking the height of it, like a house-lark, and then cutting the 
angles, like a swallow. " Very pretty flying indeed," said we, 
" and very moderate." 

A house for the purpose of taking flights in, when the open 
air was to be had for nothing, is fantastic enough • but what 
shall we say to those confoundings of all time, place, and sub- 
stance, which are constantly happening to persons of any crea- 
tiveness of stomach ? Thus, you shall meet, a friend in a gate- 
way, who besides being your friend shall be your enemy ; and 
besides being Jones or Tomkins, shall be a bull ; and besides 
asking you in, shall oppose your entrance. Nevertheless you 
are not at all surprised ; or if surprised, you are only so at 
something not surprising. To be Tomkins and a bull at once, 
is the most ordinary of common- places ; but that, being a bull, 
he should have horns, is what astonishes you ; and you are 
amazed at his not being in Holborn or the Strand, where he 
never lived. To be in two places at once is not uncommon to 
a dreamer. He will also be young and old at the same time, 
a schoolboy and a man ; will live many years in a few minutes, 
like the Sultan who dipped his head in the tub of water ; will 
be full of zeal and dialogue upon some matter of indiffe- 
rence ; go to the opera with a dish under his arm, to be in the 
fashion * talk faster in verse than prose ; and ask a set of 
horses to a musical party, telling them that he knows they will 
be pleased, because blue is the general wear, and Mozart has 
gone down to Gloucestershire, to fit up a house for Epami- 
nondas. 

It is a curious proof of the concern which body has in these 
vagaries, that when you dream of any particular limb being in 
pain, you shall most likely have gone to sleep in a posture that 
affects it. A weight on the feet will produce dreams in which 
you are rooted to the ground, or caught by a goblin out of the 
earth. A cramped hand or leg shall get you tortured in the 
Inquisition ; and a head too much thrown back, give you the 
sense of an interminable visitation of stifling. The nightmare, 
the heaviest punisher of repletion, will visit some persons merely 
for lying on their backs ; which shows how much it is con- 
cerned in a particular condition of the frame. Sometimes it 



chap. i>vn.] OF DREAMS. 99 

lies upon the chest like a vital lump. Sometimes it comes in 
the guise of a horrid dwarf, or malignant little hag, who grins 
in your teeth and will not let you rise. Its most common enor- 
mity is to pin you to the ground with excess of fear, while 
something dreadful is coming up, a goblin or a mad bulL 
Sometimes the horror is of a very elaborate description, such 
as being spell-bound in an old house, which has a mysterious 
and shocking possessor. He is a gigantic deformity, and will 
pass presently through the room in which you are sitting. He 
comes, not a giant, but a dwarf, of the most strange and odious 
description, hairy, spider-like, and chuckling. His mere pas- 
sage is unbearable. The agony rises at every step. You 
would protest against so malignant a sublimation of the shock- 
ing, but are unable to move or speak. At length you give loud 
and long-drawn groans, and start up with a preternatural effort, 
awake. 

Mr. Coleridge, whose sleeping imagination is proportioned to 
his waking, has described a fearful dream of mental and bodily 
torture. As the beautiful poems of Chrislabel, &c, which ac- 
company it, seem to have been too imaginative to be understood 
by the critics, and consequently have wanted the general atten- 
tion which the town are pleased to give or otherwise according 
to the injunctions of those gentlemen, we shall indulge our- 
selves in extracting the whole of it. It is entitled the Pains of 
Sleep. 
I 

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay 

It hath not been my use to pray 

With moving lips on bended knees; 

But silently, by slow degrees, 

My spirit I to love compose, 

In humble trust mine eye-lids close, 

With reverential resignation, 

No wish conceived, no thought express'd! 

Only a sense of supplication, 

A sense o'er all my soul imprest, 

That I am weak, yet not unblest, 

Since in me, round me, everywhere 

Eternal Strength and Wisdom are. 






100 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lvtt 

But yester-night I pray'd aloud, 

In anguish and in agony, 

Up -starting from the fiendish crowd 

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me ; 

A lurid light, a trampling throng, 

Sense of intolerable wrong, 

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong ! 

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will, 

Still baffled, and yet burning still ! 

Desire with loathing strangely mix'd 

On wild or hateful objects fix'd, 

Fantastic passions ! madd'ning brawl ! 

And shame and terror over all ! 

Deeds to be hid which were not hid, 

Which all confused I could not know, 

Whether I surTer'd, or I did : 

For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe. 

My own or others still the same, 

Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame ! 

So two nights pass'd : the night's dismay 
Sadden'd and stunn'd the coming day. 
Sleep, the wide blessing, seem'd to me 
Distemper's worst calamity. 
The third night, when my own loud scream 
Had waked me from the fiendish dream, 
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, 
I wept as I had been a child ; 
And having thus by tears subdued 
My anguish to a milder mood, 
Such punishments, I said, were due 
To natures deepliest stain'd with sin : 
For aye entempesting anew 
Th' unfathomable hell within 
The horror of their deeds to view, 
To know and loathe, yet wish to do ! 
Such griefs with such men well agree, 
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ? 
To be beloved is all I need, 
And whom I love, I love indeed. 

This is the dream of a poet, and does not end with the ques- 
tion of a philosopher. We do not pretend to determine wh) r we 
should have any pains at all. It is enough for us, in our attempt 
to diminish them, that there are more pleasant than painful ex- 



chap, i, vii.] OF DREAMS 101 



citements in the world, and that many pains are the causes of 
pleasure. But what if these pains are for the same end ? What 
if all this heaping and war of agonies were owing to the author's 
having taken too little exercise, or eaten a heavier supper than 
ordinary ? But then the proportion ! What proportion, it may 
be asked, is there between the sin of neglected exercise and 
such infernal visitations as these ? We answer, — the proportion, 
not of the particular offence, but of the general consequences. 
We have before observed, but it cannot be repeated too often, 
that Nature, charitable as any poet or philosopher can be upon 
the subject of merit and demerit, &c, seems to insist, beyond 
anything else, upon our taking care of the mould in which she 
has cast us ; or in other words, of that ground- work of all com- 
fort, that box which contains the jewel of existence, our health. 
On turning to the preceding poem in the book, entitled Kubla 
Khan, we perceive that in his introduction to that pleasanter 
vision, the author speaks of the present one as the dream of pain 
and disease. Kubla Khan, which was meditated under the 
effects of opium, he calls " a psychological curiosity." It is so; 
but it is also, and still more, a somatological or bodily one ; for 
body will effect these things upon the mind, when the mind can 
do no such thing upon itself; and therefore the shortest, most 
useful, and most philosophical way of proceeding, is to treat 
the phenomenon in the manner most serviceable to the health 
and comfort of both. We subjoin the conclusion of Kubla 
Khan, as beginning with an exquisite niece of music, and ending 
with a most poetical phantasm : — 

A damsel with a dulcimer 

In a vision once I saw ; 
It was an Abyssinian maid, 
And on her dulcimer she play'd, 

Singing of Mount Abora. 

Could I revive within me 
Her symphony and song, 
To such a deep delight 'twould win me, 

That with music loud and long 
I would build that dome in air, 
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice ! 



102 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lvii. 

And all who heard should see them there, 
And all should cry Beware, Beware, 
His flashing eyes, his floating hair ! 
Weave a circle round him thrice, 
And close your eyes with holy dread ; 
For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
And drank of the milk of Paradise. 

If horrible and fantastic dreams are the most perplexing, there 
are pathetic ones more saddening. A friend dreaming of the 
loss of his friend, or a lover of that of his mistress, or a kins- 
man of that of a dear relation, is steeped in the bitterness of 
death. To wake and find it not true, — what a delicious sensa- 
tion is that ! On the other hand, to dream of a friend or a be- 
loved relative restored to us, — to live over again the hours of 
childhood at the knee of a beloved mother, to be on the eve of 
marrying an affectionate mistress, with a thousand other joys 
snatched back out of the grave, and too painful to dwell upon, — 
what a dreary rush of sensation comes like a shadow upon us 
when we awake ! How true, and divested of all that is justly 
called conceit in poetry, is that termination of Milton's sonnet 
on dreaming of his deceased wife, — 

But oh, as to embrace me she inclined, 

I waked ; she fled ; and day brought back my night. 

It is strange that so good and cordial a critic as Warton should 
think this a mere conceit on his blindness. An allusion to his 
blindness may or may not be involved in it ; but the sense of 
returning shadow on the mind is true to nature, and must have 
been experienced by every one who has lost a person dear to him. 
There is a beautiful sonnet by Camoens on a similar occasion ; 
a small canzone by Sanazzaro, which ends with saying, that 
although he waked and missed his lady's hand in his, he still 
tried to cheat himself by keeping his eyes shut ; and three divine 
dreams of Laura by Petrarch, Sonnet xxxiv., Vol. 2, Sonnet 
Ixxix., ib., and the canzone beginning 

Quando il soave mio fido conforto. 
But we must be cautious how we think of the poets on this 



chap, lvii.] ON DREAMS. 103 

most poetical subject, or we shall write three articles instead of 
one. As it is, we have not left ourselves room for some very- 
agreeable dreams, which we meant to have taken between these 
our gallant and imaginative sheets. They must be interrupted, 
as they are apt to be, like the young lady's in the Adventures of a 
Lapdog, who blushing divinely, had just uttered the words, " My 
Lord, I am wholly yours," when she was awaked by the jump- 
ing up of that officious little puppy. 



104 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lviii. 



CHAPTER LVIII. 

A Human Animal, and the other Extreme. 

We met the other day with the following description of an 
animal of quality in a Biographical Dictionary that was pub- 
lished in the year 1767, and which is one of the most amusing 
and spirited publications of the kind that we remember to have 
seen. The writer does not give his authority for this particular 
memoir, so that it was probably furnished from his own know- 
ledge ; but that the account is a true one is evident. Indeed, 
with the exception of one or two eccentricities of prudence, which 
rather lean to the side of an excess of instinct, it is but an indi- 
vidual description, referring to a numerous class of the same 
nature, that once flourished with horn and hound in this country, 
and specimens of which are to be found here and there still.* 
The title we have put at the head of it is not quite correct and 
exclusive enough as a definition ; since, properly speaking, we 
lords of the creation are all human animals ; but the mere animal, 
or bodily and breathing faculty, is combined in us more or less 
with intellect and sentiment ; and of these refinements of the 
perception, few bipeds that have arrived at the dignity of a coat 
and boots, have partaken so little as the noble squire before us. 
How far some of us, who take ourselves for very rational per- 
sons, do or do not go beyond him, we shall perhaps see in the 
course of our remarks. 

" The Honorable William Hastings, a gentleman of a very 
singular character," says our informant, " lived in the year 1638, 
and by his quality was son, brother, and uncle to the Earls of 

*. Since writing this, we have discovered that the original is in Hutchins's 
History of Dorsetshire. See Gilpin's Forest Scenery or Drake's Shak- 
speare and his Times. It is said to have been written by the first Earl of 
Shaftesbury. 



chap, lviii.] A HUMAN ANIMAL. 105 

Huntingdon. He was peradventure an original in our age, or 
rather the copy of our ancient nobility, in hunting, not in war- 
like times. 

" He was very low, very strong, and very active, of a reddish 
flaxen hair; his clothes green cloth, and never all worth, when 
new, five pounds. 

" His house was perfectly of the old fashion, in the midst of a 
large park well stocked with deer, and near the house rabbits to 
serve his kitchen ; many fish-ponds ; great store of wood and 
timber ; a bowling-green in it, long but narrow, and full of high 
ridges, it being never levelled since it was plowed ; they used 
round sand bowls ; and it had a banquetting house like a stand, 
a large one built in a tree. 

" He kept all manner of sport hounds, that run buck, fox, 
hare, otter, and badger; and hawks, long and short- winged. He 
had all sorts of nets for fish ; he had a walk in the New Forest ; 
and in the manor of Christ Church : this last supplied him with 
red deer, sea and river fish. And indeed all his neighbors 5 
grounds and royalties were free to him; who bestowed all his 
time on these sports, but what he borrowed to caress his neigh- 
bors' wives and daughters ; there being not a woman, in all 
his walks, of the degree of a yeoman's wife, and under the age 
of forty, but it was extremely her fault, if he was not intimately 
acquainted with her. This made him very popular ; always 
speaking kindly to the husband, brother, or father, who was to 
boot very welcome to his house whenever he came. 

" There he found beef, pudding, and small beer in great plenty ; 
a house not so neatly kept as to shame him or his dusty shoes ; 
the great hall strewed with marrow-bones, full of hawks, perches, 
hounds, spaniels, and terriers ; the upper side of the hall hung 
with the fox-skins of this and the last year's killing ; here and 
there a pole-cat intermixed ; game-keepers' and hunters' poles 
in great abundance. 

" The parlor was a great room as properly furnished. On 
a great hearth, paved with brick, lay some terriers, and the 
choicest hounds and spaniels. Seldom but two of the great 
chairs had litters of young cats in them, which were net to be 
disturbed \ he having always three or four attending him at 



108 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lviii. 

dinner, and a little white round stick of fourteen inches long 
lying by his trencher, that he might defend such meat as he had 
no mind to part with to them. 

" The windows, which were very large, served for places to 
lay his arrows, cross-bows, stone-bows, and other such-like 
accoutrements. The corners of the room, full of the best chose 
hunting and hawking-poles. An oyster-table at the lower end ; 
which was of constant use, twice a day, all the year round. 
For he never failed to eat oysters, before dinner and supper, 
through all seasons ; the neighboring town of Pool supplied him 
with them. 

" The upper part of the room had two small tables and a desk, 
on the one side of which was a Church Bible, and, on the other, 
the Book of Martyrs. On the tables were hawks-hoods, bells, 
and such like ; two or three old green hats, with their crowns 
thrust in, so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a 
pheasant kind of poultry which he took much care of, and fed 
himself. In the whole of the desk were store of tobacco-pipes 
that had been used. 

" On one side of this end of the room was the door of a closet, 
wherein stood the strong beer and the wine, which never came 
thence but in single glasses, that being the rule of the house 
exactly observed. For he never exceeded in drink or per- 
mitted it. 

" On the other side was the door into an old chapel, not used 
for devotion. The pulpit, as the safest place, was never want- 
ing of a cold chine of beef, venison pasty, gammon of bacon, or 
great apple-pie, with thick crust extremely baked. His table 
cost him not much, though it was good to eat at. 

" His sports supplied all but beef and mutton ; except Fridays, 
when he had the best of salt fish (as well as other fish) he could 
get ; and was the day his neighbors of best quality most visited 
him. He never wanted a London pudding, and always sung it 
in with 'My pearl lies therein-a.' He drank a glass or two of 
wine at meals ; very often syrup of gilliflowers in his sack ; and 
had always a tun glass without feet, stood by him, holding a pint 
of small beer, which he often stirred with rosemary. 



chap, lviii.] A HUMAN ANIMAL, 107 

" He was well natured, but soon angry ; calling his servants 
bastards and cuckoldy knaves ; in one of which he often spoke 
truth to his own knowledge, and sometimes in both, though of the 
same man. He lived to be an hundred; never lost his eye- 
sight, but always wrote and read without spectacles ; and got 
on horseback without help. Until past four-score, he rode to the 
death of a stag as well as any." 

It is clear that this worthy personage was nothing more than 
a kind of beaver or badger in human shape. We imagine him 
haunting the neighborhood in which he lived, like a pet crea- 
ture who had acquired a certain ^Egyptian godship among the 
natives ; now hunting for his fish, now for his flesh, now fawning 
after his uncouth fashion upon a pretty girl, and now snarling 
and contesting a bone with his dogs. We imagine him the 
animal principle personified ; a symbol on horseback ; a jolly 
dog sitting upright at dinner, like a hieroglyphic on a pedestal. 

Buffon has a subtle answer to those who argue for the ration- 
ality of bees. He says that the extreme order of their proceed- 
ings, and the undeviating apparent forethought with which they 
anticipate and provide for a certain geometrical necessity in a 
part of the structure of their hives, are only additional proofs of 
the force of instinct. They have an instinct for the order, and 
an instinct for the anticipation ; and they prove that it is not rea- 
son, by never striking out anything new. The same thing is 
observable in our human animal. What would be reason or 
choice in another man, is to be set down in him to poverty of 
ideas. If Tasso had been asked the reason of his always wear- 
ing black, he would probably have surprised the inquirer by a 
series of observations on color, and dignity, and melancholy, and 
the darkness of his fate ; but if Petrarch and Boccacio had dis- 
cussed the matter with him, he might have changed it to purple. 
A lady, in the same manner, wears black, because it suits her 
complexion, or is elegant at all times, or because it is at once 
piquant and superior. But in spring, she may choose to put on 
the colors of the season, and in summer to be gaudier with the 
butterfly. Our squire had an instinct towards the color of 
green, because he saw it about him. He took it from what he 
lived in, like a cameleon, and never changed it, because he could 



108 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lvih. 

live in no other sphere. We see that his green suit was never 
worth five pounds ; and nothing, we dare say, could have 
induced him to let it mount up to that sum. He would have 
had it grow on him, if he could, like a green monkey. Thus 
again with his bowling-green. It was not penuriousness that 
hindered him from altering it, but he had no more idea of chang- 
ing the place than the place itself. As change of habit is fright- 
ful to some men, from vivacity of affection or imagination, and 
the strangeness which they anticipate in the novelty, so Mr. 
Hastings was never tempted out of a custom, because he had no 
idea of anything else. He would no more think of altering the 
place he burrowed in, than a tortoise or a wild rabbit. He was 
fercE naturce, — a regular beast of prey ; though he mingled some- 
thing of the generosity of the lion with the lurking of the fox and 
the mischievous sporting of the cat. He would let other animals 
feed with him, only warning them off occasionally with that 
switch of his, instead of a claw. He had the same liberality of 
instinct towards the young of other creatures, as we see in the 
hen and the goat. He would take care of their eggs, if he had 
a mind ; or furnish them with milk. His very body was 
badger-like. It was "very low, very strong, and very active ;" 
and he had a coarse fell of hair. A good housewife might have 
called his house a kennel, without being abusive. What the 
ladies of the Huntingdon family thought of it, if ever they came 
to see him, we do not know ; but next to hearing such a fellow 
as Squire Western talk, must have been the horror of his human 
kindred in treading those menageries, his hall and parlor. They 
might turn the lines of Chaucer into an exclamation : 

What hawkis sitten on the perch above ! 
What houndis liggen on the floor adown ! 

Then the marrow-bones, the noise, and, to a delicate ancle, the 
sense of danger ! Conceive a timid stranger, not very welcome, 
obliged to pass through the great hall. The whole animal 
world is up. The well-mouthed hounds begin barking, the mas- 
tiff bays, the terriers snap, the hawks sidle and stare, the poultry 
gobble, the cats growl and up with their backs. At last, the 
Hastings makes his appearance, and laughs like a goblin. 



chap, lviii.] A HUMAN ANIMAL. 109 



Three things are specially observable in our hero : first, that 
his religion as well as literature was so entirely confined to faith, 
that it allowed him to turn his household chapel into a larder, 
and do anything else he pleased, short of not ranking the Bible 
and Book of Martyrs with his other fixtures ; — second, that he 
carried his prudential instincts to a pitch unusual in a country 
squire, who can rarely refrain from making extremes meet with 
humanity in this instance : — and third, that his proneness to the 
animal part of love, never finding him in a condition to be so 
brutal, as drinking renders a gallant of this sort, left himself as 
well as others in sufficient good humor, not only to get him for- 
given by the females, but to act kindly and be tolerated by the 
men. He was as temperate in his liquor as one of his cats, 
drinking only to quench thirst, and leaving off when he had 
enough. This perhaps was partly owing to his rank, which did 
not render it necessary to his importance to be emulous with his 
bottle among the squires. As to some grave questions connected 
with the promiscuous nature of his amours, an animal so totally 
given up to his instincts as he was, can hardly be held responsi- 
ble upon such points ; though they are worth the consideration 
of those who, in their old age, undertake to be moral as well as 
profligate. If Mr. Hastings's notion was good and even useful, 
so far as it showed the natural good-humor of that passion in 
human beings, where sickness or jealousy is out of the question, 
in every other respect it was as poor and paltry as could be. 
There was not a single idea in it beyond one of his hounds. It 
was 1 entirely gross and superficial, without sentiment, without 
choice, without a thousand sensations of pleasure and the return 
of it, without the least perception of a beauty beyond the mere 
absence of age. The most idiotical scold in the village, " under 
forty," was to him a desirable object. The most loveable woman 
in the world above it, was lost upon him. Such lovers do not 
even enjoy the charms they suppose. They do not see a twen- 
tieth part of the external graces. They criticise beauty in the 
language of a horse-jockey ; and the jockey, or the horse him- 
self, knows just as much about it as they. 

In short, to be candid on all sides with the very earthy mem- 
ory of the Honorable Mr. William Hastings, we take a person 



110 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lviii. 

of his description to be a good specimen of the animal part of 
the human nature, and chiefly on this account, that the animal 
preserves its health. There indeed it has something to say for 
itself; nor must we conceal our belief, that upon this ground 
alone, the Hastings must have had sensations in the course of 
his lire, which many an intellectual person might envy. His 
perceptions must have been of a vague sort, but they were in all 
probability exquisitely clear and unalloyed. He must have had 
all the pleasure from the sunshine and the fresh air, that a 
healthy body without a mind in it can have ; and we may guess 
from the days of childhood, what those feelings may resemble, 
in their pleasantness, as well as vagueness. At the age of a 
hundred he was able to read and write without spectacles ; not 
better perhaps than he did at fifteen, but as well. At a hundred, 
he was truly an old boy, and no more thought of putting on 
spectacles than an eagle. Why should he ? His blood had run 
clear for a century with exercise and natural living. He had 
not baked it black and " heavy thick " over a fire, nor dimmed 
the windows of his perception with the smoke. 

Cut he wanted a soul to turn his perceptions to their proper 
account ?— He did so. Let us then, who see more than he did, 
contrive to see fair play between body and mind. It is by ob- 
serving the separate extremes of perfection, to which body and 
mind may arrive, in those who do not now know how to unite 
both, that we may learn how to produce a human being more 
enviable than even the healthiest of foxhunters, or the most un- 
earthly of saints. It is remarkable, that the same ancient family, 
which, among the variety and fineness of its productions, put 
forth this specimen of bodily humanity, edified the world not 
long after with as complete a specimen of the other half of hu- 
man nature. Mr. William Hastings' soul seems to have come 
too late for his body, and to have remained afterwards upon 
earth in the shape of his fair kinswoman, the Lady Elizabeth 
Hastings, daughter of Theophilus, seventh Earl of Huntingdon. 
An account of her follows that of her animal kinsman, and is a 
most, extraordinary contrast. This is the lady who is celebrated 
by Sir Richard Steele in the Taller, under the name of Aspasia, 
■ — a title which must have startled her a little. But with the 



chap, lviii.] A HUMAN ANIMAL. Ill 



elegance of the panegyric she would have found it hard not to 
be pleased, notwithstanding her modesty. " These ancients 
would be as much astonished to see in the same age so illustri- 
ous a pattern to all who love things praiseworthy, as the divine 
Aspasia. Methinks I now see her walking in her garden like 
our first parent, with unaffected charms, before beauty had spec- 
tators, and bearing celestial, conscious virtue in her aspect. 
Her countenance is the lively picture of her mind, which is the 
seat of honor, truth, compassion, knowledge, and innocence : — 

c There dwells the scorn of vice and pity too. 5 

" In the midst of the most ample fortune, and veneration of 
all that beheld and knew her, without the least affectation, she 
consults retirement, the contemplation of her own being, and 
that supreme power which bestowed it. Without the learning 
of schools, or knowledge of a long course of arguments, she goes 
on in a steady course of virtue, and adds to the severity of the 
last age all the freedom and ease of the present. The language 
and mien of a court she is possessed of in the highest degree ; 
but the simplicity and humble thoughts of a cottage are her 
more welcome entertainment. Aspasia is a female philosopher, 
who does not only live up to the resignation of the most retired 
lives of the ancient sages, but also the schemes and plans which 
they thought beautiful, though inimitable. This lady is the 
most exact economist, without appearing busy ; the most strictly 
virtuous, without tasting the praise of it ; and shuns applause 
with as much industry as others do reproach. This character 
is so particular, that it will be very easily fixed on her only, by 
all that know her, but I dare say she will be the last to find it 
out."— Tatter, No. xlii., July 16, 1709. 

This character was written when Lady Elizabeth was twenty- 
eight.* She passed the rest of her life agreeably to it, reliev- 
ing families, giving annuities, contributing to the maintenance 

* It is attributed by the annotators to Congreve, — I know not on what au- 
thority. If I know anything of style, I can swear it was Steele's. The 
moral elegance and faith of it, and the turn of the words, are all his. 



112 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lviii. 



of schools and universitv-scholars, and all the while behaving 
with extraordinary generosity to her kindred, and keeping up a 
noble establishment. Those whom such a description incites to 
know more of her, will find a good summary of her way of life 
in Miss Hays' Female Biography,— & work, by the way, which 
contrives to be at once conventional and liberal, and ought to 
be in possession of all her countrywomen. 

Miss Hays informs us, that the close of this excellent person's 
life was as suffering as it was patient. An accidental contu- 
sion in her bosom, at an early period of life, had left the seeds 
of a cancer, which for many years she disregarded. About a 
year and a half before her death she was obliged to undergo an 
amputation of the part affected, which she did with a noble and 
sweet fortitude, described in a very touching manner by another 
of her biographers. " Her ladyship," he tells us, " underwent 
this painful operation with surprising patience and resolution ; 
she showed no reluctancy, no struggle or contention ; only, 
indeed, towards the end of the operation she drew such a sigh 
as any compassionate reader may when he hears this." This 
is one of the truest and most pathetic things we remember to 
have read. Unfortunately, the amputation, though it promised 
well for a time, did no good at last. The disorder returned 
with greater malignity, and after submitting to it with her 
usual patience, and exhorting her household and friends, upon 
her death-bed, in a high strain of enthusiasm, she expired on 
the 22d of December, 1739, in the fifty-seventh year of her 
age. " Her character in miniature," says the biographer just 
quoted, " is this. She was a lady of the exactest breeding, of 
fine intellectual endowments, filled with divine wisdom, renewed 
in the spirit of her mind, fired with the love of her Creator, 
a friend to all the world, mortified in soul and body, and to 
everything that is earthly, and a little lower than the angels." 
He has a mysterious anecdote of her in the course of his ac- 
count. " The following remarkable circumstance happened to 
her in her youth. A young lady, of less severity of manners 
than herself, invited her once to an entertainment over a ro- 
mance, and very dear did she pay for it ; what evil tinctures 
she took from it I cannot tell, but. this I can, that the remem- 



chap, lviii.] A HUMAN ANIMAL. 113 

brance of it would now and then annoy her spirit down into de- 
clining life." Miss Hays concludes the memoir in the Female 
Biography with informing us, that " she was fond of her pen, 
and frequently employed herself in writing ; but, previous to 
her death, destroyed the greater part of her papers. Her for- 
tune, beauty, and amiable qualities, procured her many soli- 
citations to change her state \ but she preferred, in a single and 
independent life, to be mistress of her actions and the disposition 
of her income." 

It seems pretty clear from all these accounts, that this noble- 
hearted woman, notwithstanding her beauty and sweet temper, 
was as imperfect a specimen of animal humanity as her kins- 
man was of spiritual. We are far from meaning to prefer his 
state of existence. We confess that there are many persons we 
have read of, whom we would rather have been, than the most 
saintly of solitary spirits ; but the mere reflection of the good 
which Lady Elizabeth did to others, would not allow us a mo- 
ment's hesitation, if compelled to choose between inhabiting her 
infirm tenement and the jolly vacuity of Honorable William. 
At the same time, it is evident that the fair saint neglected the 
earthly part of herself in a way neither as happy-making nor 
as pious as she took it for. Perhaps the example of her kins- 
man tended to assist this false idea of what is pleasing to heaven, 
and made her a little too peremptory against herself; but what 
had not her lovers a right to say ? For our parts, had we lived 
then, and been at all fitted to aspire to a return of her regard, 
we should have thought it a very unfair and intolerable thing 
of her to go on doing the most exquisite and seducing actions in 
the world, and tell us that she wished to be mistress of her own 
time and generosities. So she might, and yet have been gene- 
rous to us as well as to the charity boys. But setting this aside 
(and the real secret is to be found, perhaps, in matters into which 
we cannot inquire); a proper attention to that beauteous form 
which her spirit inhabited might have done great good to her- 
self. She not only lived nearly half a century less than her 
kinsman, and thus shortened a useful life, but the less healthy 
state of her biood rendered even a soul like hers liable to in- 
cursions of melancholv to the last moment of her existence. If 
9 



114 THE INDICATOR. [chap lviii. 



it be said that this stimulated her the more to extract happiness 
out of the happiness of others, we do not deny that it may have 
done so; nor do we pretend to say that this might not have been 
the best state of existence for herself and all of us, if we could 
inquire into matters hidden from our sight. But upon that prin- 
ciple, so might her relation's. It is impossible to argue to any 
purpose upon these assumptions, which are only good for pa- 
tience, not for action. William Hastings was all bodily comfort ; 
Elizabeth Hastings was all mental grace. How far the liability 
of the former to gusts of passion, as well as the other conditions 
of his being, settled the balance with her necessity for being pa- 
tient, it is impossible to say ; but it is easy and right to say, that 
nobody would like to undergo operations for a cancer, or to die 
at fifty-seven, when they could live healthily to a hundred. 

"What, then, is our conclusion? This: that the proper point 
of humanity lies between the two natures, though not at equal 
distances ; the greatest possible sum of happiness for mankind 
demanding that great part of our pleasure should be founded in 
that of others. Those, however, who hold rigid theories of mo- 
rality and yet practise them not (which is much oftener the case 
with such theories than the reverse), must take care how they 
flatter themselves they resemble Lady Elizabeth. Their ex- 
treme difference with her kinsman is a mere cant, to which all 
the privileged selfishness and sensuality in the world give the 
lie — all the pomps and vanities, all the hatred, all the maligni- 
ties, all the eatings and drinkings, such as William Hastings 
himself would have been ashamed of. In fact, their real in- 
stincts are generally as selfish as his, though in other shapes, 
and much less agreeable for everybody. When cant lives as 
long and healthy a life as his, or as good a one as hers, it will 
be worth attending to. Till then, the best thing to advise is, 
neither to be canting, nor merely animal, nor over-spiritual ; but 
to endeavor to enjoy, with the greatest possible distribution of 
happiness, all the faculties we receive from nature. 



chap, lix.] RETURN OF AUTUMN. 115 



CHAPTER LIX. 

Return of Autumn. 

The autumn is now confirmed. The harvest is over ; the sum- 
mer birds are gone or going ; heavy rains have swept the air 
of its warmth, and prepared the earth for the impressions of 
winter. 

And the author's season changes likewise. We can no lon- 
ger persuade ourselves that it is summer, by dint of resolving 
to think so. We cannot warm ourselves at the look of the sun- 
shine. Instead of sitting at the window, " hindering" ourselves, 
as people say, with enjoying the sight of Nature, we find our 
knees turned round to the fire-place, our face opposite a pictured 
instead of a real landscape, and our feet toasting upon a fender. 

When some enjoyments go, others come. The boys will now 
be gathering their nuts. The trees will put forth, in their bravely 
dying leaves, all the colors of heaven and earth, which they 
have received from sun, and rain, and soil. Nature, in her 
heaps of grain and berries, will set before the animal creation 
as profuse and luxurious a feast, as any of our lordly palates 
have received from dish and dessert. 

Nature, with the help of a very little art, can put forth a pret- 
tier bill of fare than most persons, if people will but persuade 
each other that cheapness is as good as dearness; — a discovery, 
we think, to which the tax-gatherer might help us. Let us see 
what she says this autumn. Imagine us seated at the bar of 
some fashionable retreat, or boxed in a sylvan scene of conside- 
rable resort. Enter, a waiter, the September of Spencer — that 
ingenious and (to a punster) oddly-dressed rogue, of whom we 
are told, that when he appeared before the poet, he was 

Heavy laden with the spoil 
Of harvest's riches, which he made his hoot. 



116 THE INDICATOR. [chap. ijx. 

At present, he assumes a more modest aspect, with a bunch of 
ash-leaves under his arm by way of duster. He bows like a 
poplar, draws a west wind through his teeth genteelly, and lays 
before us the following bill of entertainment : — 

Fish, infinite and cheap. 

Fruit, ditto. 

Nuts, ditto. 

Bread, ditto — taxed. 

Fresh airs, taxed if in doors — not out. 

Light, the same. 

Wine in its unadulterated shape, as grapes, or sunshine, or 
well-fermented blood. 

Arbors of ivy, wild honeysuckle, arbutus, &c, all in flower. 

Other flowers on table. 

The ante-room, with a view into it, immense with a sky-blue 
cupola, and hung round with landscapes confessedly inimitable. 

Towards the conclusion, a vocal concert among the trees. 

At night, falling stars, and a striking panoramic view of the 
heavens ; on which occasion, for a few nights only, the same 
moon will be introduced that was admired by the " immortal 
Shakspeare ! ! !" 

N. B. — It is reported by some malignant persons, that the 
bird-concert is not artificial : whereas it will be found, upon the 
smallest inspection, to beat even the most elaborate inventions 
of the justly admired Signor Mecanjical Fello. 



chap, lx.] THE MAID-SERVANT. 117 



CHAPTER LX. 

The Maid-Servant* 

Must be considered as young, or else she has married the 
butcher, the butler, or her cousin, or has otherwise settled into a 
character distinct from her original one, so as to become what 
is properly called the domestic. The Maid-Servant, in her ap- 
parel, is either slovenly and fine by turns, and dirty always ; or 
she is at all times neat and tight, and dressed according to her 
station. In the latter case, her ordinary dress is black stockings, 
a stuff gown, a cap, and a neck-handkerchief pinned corner- 
wise behind. If you want a pin, she feels about her, and has 
always one to give you. On Sundays and holidays, and per- 
haps of afternoons, she changes her black stockings for white, 
puts on a gown of a better texture and fine pattern, sets her cap 
and her curls jauntily, and lays aside the neck-handkerchief for 
a high-body, which, by the way, is not half so pretty. 

The general furniture of her ordinary room, the kitchen, is not 
so much her own as her master's and mistress's, and need not be 
described : but in a drawer of the dresser or the table, in company 
with a duster and a pair of snuffers, may be found some of her pro- 
perty, such as a brass thimble, a pair of scissors, a thread-case, a 
piece of wax candle much wrinkled with the thread, an odd 
volume of Pamela, and perhaps a sixpenny play, such as George 
Barnwell or Southerne's Oroonoko. There is a piece of look- 
ing-glass in the window. The rest of her furniture is in the 
garret, where you may find a good looking-glass on the table ; 
and in the window a Bible, a comb and a piece of soap. Here 
stands also, under stout lock and key, the mighty mystery, — 

* In some respects, particularly of costume, this portrait must be under- 
stood of originals existing twenty or thirty years ago. 



1.18 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lx. 

the box, — containing, among other things, her clothes, two or 
three song-books, consisting of nineteen for the penny ; sundry 
Tragedies at a halfpenny the sheet ; the Whole Nature of 
Breams Laid Open, together with the Fortune-teller and the 
Accounts of the Ghost of Mrs. Veal; the Story of the Beauti- 
ful Zoa " who was cast away on a desert island, showing how/' 
&c. ; some half-crowns in a purse, including pieces of country- 
money ; a silver penny wrapped up in cotton by itself; a crooked 
sixpence, given her before she came to town, and the giver of 
which has either forgotten or been forgotten by her, she is not 
sure which ; — two little enamel boxes, with looking-glass in the 
lids, one of them a fairing, the other " a Trifle from Margate ;" 
and lastly, various letters, square and ragged, and directed in 
all sorts of spellings, chiefly with little letters for capitals. One 
of them, written by a girl who went to a day-school, is directed 
" Miss." 

In her manners, the Maid-servant sometimes imitates her young 
mistress ; she puts her hair in papers, cultivates a shape, and 
occasionally contrives to be out of spirits. But her own cha- 
racter and condition overcome all sophistications of this sort ; 
her shape, fortified by the mop and scrubbing-brush, will make 
its way ; and exercise keeps her healthy and cheerful. From 
the same cause her temper is good ; though she gets into little 
heats when a stranger is over saucy, or when she is told not to 
go so heavily down stairs, or when some unthinking person goes 
up her wet stairs with dirty shoes, — or when she is called away 
often from dinner ; neither does she much like to be seen scrub- 
bing the street-door steps of a morning ; and sometimes she 
catches herself saying, "Drat that butcher," but immediately 
adds, " God forgive me." The tradesmen indeed, with their 
compliments and arch looks, seldom give her cause to complain. 
The milkman bespeaks her good-humor for the day with " Come, 
pretty maids :" — then follow the butcher, the baker, the oilman, 
&c, all with their several smirks and little loiterings; and when 
she goes to the shops herself, it is for her the grocer pulls down 
his string from its roller with more than ordinary whirl, and 
tosses his parcel into a tie. 

Thus pass the mornings between working, and singing, and 



chap, lx.] THE MAID SERVANT. 119 

giggling, and grumbling, and being flattered. If she takes any 
pleasure unconnected with her office before the afternoon, it is 
when she runs up the area-steps or to the door to hear and pur- 
chase a new song, or to see a troop of soldiers go by ; or when 
she happens to thrust her head out of a chamber window at the 
same time with a servant at the next house, when a dialogue in- 
fallibly ensues, stimulated by the imaginary obstacles between. 
If the Maid-servant is wise, the best part of her work is done 
by dinner-time ; and nothing else is necessary to give perfect 
zest to the meal. She tells us what she thinks of it, when she 
calls it " a bit o' dinner/' There is the same sort of eloquence 
in her other phrase, "a cup o' tea ;" but the old ones, and the 
washerwomen, beat her at that. After tea in great houses, she 
goes with the other servants to hot cockles, or What-are-my- 
thoughts-like, and tells Mr. John to " have done then ;" or if 
there is a ball given that night, they throw open the doors, and 
make use of the music up stairs to dance by. In smaller houses, 
she receives the visits of her aforesaid cousin ; and sits down 
alone, or with a fellow maid-servant, to work ; talks of her 
young master or mistress and Mr. Irvins (Evans) ; or else she 
calls to mind her own friends in the country ; where she thinks 
the cows and " all that" beautiful, now she is away. Mean- 
while, if she is lazy, she snuffs the candle with her scissors ; or 
if she has eaten more heartily than usual, she sighs double the 
usual number of times, and thinks that tender hearts were born 
to be unhappy. 

Such being the Maid-servant's life in-doors, she scorns, when 
abroad, to be anything but a creature of sheer enjoyment. The 
Maid-servant, the sailor, and the school-boy, are the three beings 
that enjoy a holiday beyond all the rest of the world ; — and all 
for the same reason, — because their inexperience, peculiarity 
of life, and habit of being with persons of circumstances or 
thoughts above them, give them all, in their way, a cast of the 
romantic. The most active of the money-getters is a vegetable 
compared with them. The Maid-servant, when she first goes to 
Vauxhall, thinks she is in heaven. A theatre is all pleasure to 
her, whatever is going forward, whether the play or the music, or 
the waiting which makes others impatient, or the munching of 



120 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lx. 

apples and gingerbread, which she and her party commence 
almost as soon as they have seated themselves. She prefers 
tragedy to comedy, because it is grander, and less like what she 
meets with in general ; and because she thinks it more in earn- 
est also, especially in the love-scenes. Her favorite play is 
" Alexander the Great, or the Rival Queens ." Another great 
delight is in going a shopping. She loves to look at the patterns 
in the windows, and the fine things labelled with those corpulent 
numerals of " only 7s." — "only 6s. 6d." She has also, unless 
born and bred in London, been to see my Lord Mayor, the fine 
people coming out of Court, and the " beasties" in the Tower ; 
and at all events she has been to Astley's and the Circus, from 
which she comes away, equally smitten with the rider, and sore 
with laughing at the clown. But it is difficult to say what 
pleasure she enjoys most. One of the completest of all is the 
fair, where she walks through an endless round of noise, and 
toys, and gallant apprentices, and wonders. Here she is in- 
vited in by courteous and well-dressed people, as if she were the 
mistress. Here also is the conjuror's booth, where the operator 
himself, a most stately and genteel person all in white, calls her 
Ma'am ; and says to John by her side, in spite of his laced hat, 
" Be good enough, sir, to hand the card to the lady." 

Ah ! may her " cousin " turn out as true as he says he is ; or 
may she get home soon enough and smiling enough to be as 
happy again next time. 



chap, lxi.] THE OLD LADY. 121 



CHAPTER LXI. 

The Old Lady. 

If the old lady is a widow and lives alone, the manners of her 
condition and time of life are so much the more apparent. She 
generally dresses in plain silks, that make a gentle rustling as 
she moves about the silence of her room ; and she wears a nice 
cap with a lace border, that comes under the chin. In a placket 
at her side is an old enamelled watch, unless it is locked up in a 
drawer of her toilet, for fear of accidents. Her waist is 
rather tight and trim than otherwise, and she had a fine one when 
young ; and she is not sorry if you see a pair of her stockings on 
a table, that you may be aware of the neatness of her leg and 
foot. Contented with these and other evident indications of a 
good shape, and letting her young friends understand that she 
can afford to obscure it a little, she wears pockets, and uses them 
well too. In the one is her handkerchief, and any heavier mat- 
ter that is not likely to come out with it, such as the change of 
a sixpence ; in the other is a miscellaneous assortment, consist- 
ing of a pocket-book, a bunch of keys, a needle-case, a spec- 
tacle-case, crumbs of biscuit, a nutmeg and grater, a smelling- 
bottle, and according to the season, an orange or apple, which 
after many days she draws out warm and glossy, to give to some 
little child that has well-behaved itself. She generally occupies 
two rooms, in the neatest condition possible. In the chamber is 
a bed with a white coverlet, built up high and round, to look 
well, and with curtains of a pastoral pattern, consisting alter- 
nately of large plants, and shepherds and shepherdesses. On 
the mantel- piece are more shepherds and shepherdesses, with 
dot-eyed sheep at their feet, all in colored ware : the man, per- 
haps, in a pink jacket and knots of ribbons at his knees and shoes, 
holding his crook lightly in one hand, and with the other at his 
breast, turning his toes out and looking tenderly at the shep- 



122 THE INDICATOR. [chap. liv. 

herdess : the woman holding a crook also, and modestly return- 
ing his look, with a gipsy-hat jerked up behind, a very slender 
waist, with petticoat and hips to counteract, and the petticoat 
pulled up through the pocket-holes, in order to show the trimness 
of her ancles. But these patterns, of course, are various. The 
toilet is ancient, carved at the edges, and tied about with a snow- 
white drapery of muslin. Beside it are various boxes, mostly 
japan ; and the set of drawers are exquisite things for a little 
girl to rummage, if ever little girl be so bold, — containing rib- 
bons and laces of various kinds ; linen smelling of lavender, of 
the flowers of which there is always dust in the corners ; a heap 
of pocket-books for a series of years ; and pieces of dress long 
gone by, such as head fronts, stomachers, and flowered satin 
shoes, with enormous heels. The stock of letters are under es- 
pecial lock and key. So much for the bed-room. In the sitting 
room is rather a spare assortment of shining old mahogany fur- 
niture, or carved arm-chairs equally old, with chintz draperies 
down to the ground ; a folding or other screen, with Chinese 
figures, their round, little-eyed, meek faces perking sideways ; 
a stuffed bird, perhaps in a glass case (a living one is too much 
for her) ; a portrait of her husband over the mantel-piece, in a 
coat with frog-buttons, and a delicate frilled hand lightly insert- 
ed in the waistcoat ; and opposite him on the wall, is a piece of 
embroidered literature, framed and glazed, containing some 
moral distich or maxim, worked in angular capital letters, with 
two trees or parrots below, in their proper colors ; the whole 
concluding with an ABC and numerals, and the name of the fair 
industrious, expressing it to be " her work, Jan. 14, 1762." The 
rest of the furniture consists of a looking-glass with carved edges, 
perhaps a settee, a hassock for the feet, a mat for the little dog, 
and a small set of shelves, in which are the Spectator and Guar- 
dian, the Turkish Spy, a Bible and Prayer Book, Young's Night 
Thoughts with a piece of lace in it to flatten, Mrs. Rome's Devout 
Exercises of the Heart, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery and perhaps Sir 
Charles Grandison, and Clarissa. John Buncle is in the closet 
among the pickles and preserves. The clock is on the landing- 
place between the two room doors, where it ticks audibly but 
quietly ; and the landing-place is carpeted to a nicety. The 



chap, lxi.] THE OLD LADY. 123 

house is most in character, and properly coeval, if it is in a re- 
tired suburb, and strongly built, with wainscot rather than paper 
inside, and lockers in the windows. Before the windows should 
be some quivering poplars. Here the Old Lady receives a few 
quiet visitors to tea, and perhaps an early game at cards : or you 
may see her going out on the same kind of visit herself, with a 
light umbrella running up into a stick and crooked ivory handle, 
and her little dog, equally famous for his love to her and cap- 
tious antipathy to strangers. Her grand-children dislike him on 
holidays, and the boldest sometimes ventures to give him a sly 
kick under the table. When she returns at night, she appears, 
if the weather happens to be doubtful, in a calash ; and her ser- 
vant in pattens follows half behind and half at her side, with a 
lantern. 

Her opinions are not many nor new. She thinks the clergy- 
man a nice man. The duke of Wellington, in her opinion, is a 
very great man ; but she has a secret preference for the Marquis 
of Granby. She thinks the young women of the present day too 
forward, and the men not respectful enough ; but hopes her grand- 
children will be better ; though she differs with her daughter in 
several points respecting their management. She sets little 
value on the new accomplishments ; is a great though delicate 
connoisseur in butcher's meat and all sorts of housewifery ; and 
if you mention waltzes, expatiates on the grace and fine breeding 
of the minuet. She longs to have seen one danced by Sir 
Charles Grandison, whom she almost considers as a real person. 
She likes a walk of a summer's evening, but avoids the new 
streets, canals, &c, and sometimes goes through the church- 
yard, where her children and her husband lie buried, serious, 
but not melancholy. She has had three great epochs in her 
life : — her marriage — her having been at court, to see the King 
and Queen and Royal Family — and a compliment on her figure 
she once received, in passing, from Mr. Wilkes, whom she des- 
cribes as a sad, loose man, but engaging. His plainness she 
thinks much exaggerated. If anything takes her at a distance 
from home, it is still the court ; but she seldom stirs, even for 
that. The last time but one that she went, was to see the Duke 
of Wirtemburg ; and most probably for the last time of all, to 



124 THE INDICATOR [chap. lxii. 

see the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. From this be- 
atific vision she returned with the same admiration as ever for 
the fine comely appearance of the Duke of York and the rest of 
the family, and great delight at having had a near view of the 
Princess, whom she speaks of with smiling pomp and lifted mit- 
tens, clasping them as passionately as she can together, and call- 
ing her, in a transport of mixed loyalty and self-love, a fine 
royal young creature, and " Daughter of England. " 



chap, lxii.] PULCI. 125 



CHAPTER LXII. 

Pulci. 

We present our readers with a prose abridgment of the be- 
ginning of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, the father of Italian 
romance. We would rather have given it them in verse; put 
it would have taken more time and attention than we can just 
now afford. Besides, a prose specimen of this author is a less 
unjust one, than it would be of any of his successors; because 
though a real poet, he is not so eminent as a versifier, and deals 
less in poetical abstractions. He has less of the oracular or voice- 
ful part of his art, conversing almost exclusively with the social 
feelings in their most familiar language. 

Luigi Pulci, the younger of three literary brothers, was born 
the 15th of December (3d. O. S.), 1431. His family was noble, 
and probably gave their name to the district of Monte Pulciano, 
famous for the supereminence of its wine. It was a fit soil for him 
to grow in. He had an enviable lot, with nothing to interrupt 
his vivacity ; passing his life in the shades of ease and retire- 
ment, and " warbling his native wood-notes wild/' without fear 
of hawks from above, or lurking reptiles from below. Among 
his principal friends were Politian, Lorenzo de Medici, and the 
latter's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuona. He speaks affection- 
ately of her memory at the close of his work. At Lorenzo's table 
he was a constant guest ; and at this table, where it is pos- 
sible that the future pope, Leo the Tenth, was present as a little 
boy, he is said to have read, as he produced it, that remarkable 
poem, which the old Italian critics were not agreed whether to 
think pious or profane.* 

* Leo was born in 1475, forty-four years after the death of Pulci ; so that, 
supposing the latter to have arrived at anything like length of days, he may 
have had the young father of the faithful for an auditor. 



126 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxii. 

The reader, at this time of day, will be inclined to think it the 
latter ; nor will the reputation of Leo himself, who is said to have 
made use of the word "fable" on a very remarkable occasion, 
be against their verdict. Undoubtedly there was much scepti- 
cism in those days, as there always must be where there is great 
vivacity of mind, with great demands upon its credulity. But 
we must take care how we pronounce upon the real spirit of 
manners unlike our own, when we consider the extraordinary 
mixture of reverence and familiarity with which the most big- 
oted periods of Catholicism have been accustomed to treat the 
objects of their faith. They elbow them, till they treat them 
like their earthly kindred, expecting most from them, and behav- 
ing worse by them. Popish sailors have scourged the idols, 
whom they have prayed to the minute before for a fair wind. 
The most laughable exposure of the tricks of Roman Catholics 
in our own language is by old Hey wood the epigrammatist, who 
died abroad " in consequence of his devotion to the Roman 
Catholic cause. " — " The bigotry of any age," says Mr. Hazlitt, 
" is by no means a test of its piety, or even sincerity. Men seem- 
ed to make themselves amends for the enormity of their faith by 
levity of feeling, as well as by laxity of principle ; and in the 
indifference or ridicule with which they treated the wilful absurd- 
ities and extravagances to which they hoodwinked their under- 
standings, almost resembled children playing at blindman's buff, 
who grope their way in the dark, and make blunders on purpose 
to laugh at their idleness and folly." — Lectures on the Literature 
of the age of Elizabeth, p. 192. It may be added, that they are 
sometimes like children playing and laughing at ghosts in day- 
light, but afraid of them at night time. There have not been 
wanting readers to take all Pulci's levity in good religious part. 
This does not seem possible ; but it is possible that he may have 
had a certain conventional faith in religion, or even regarded it 
as a sentiment and a general truth, while the goodness of his 
disposition led him to be ironical upon particular dogmas. We 
must judge him in charity, giving him the benefit of our doubts. 

The specimen now laid before the reader is perhaps as good a 
one, for prose, as could have been selected. The characteristics 
of our poet are wildness of fancy, pithiness of humor, sprightliness 



chap, lxii.] PULCI, 127 

of transition, and tenderness of heart. All these, if the reader 
has any congeniality of spirit, he ma} 7 find successively in the 
outset about the giants, the complaint made of them by the 
Abbot, the incipient adventures of Morgante in his new charac- 
ter, and the farewell, and family recognition of the Abbot and 
Orlando. The passages about the falling of manna, and the 
eternal punishment of those who are dear to us, furnish the 
earliest instance of that penetration into absurdity, and the un- 
conscious matter-of-course air of sneaking of it, which constitute 
the humorous part of the style of Voltaire. The character of 
Margutte, who makes his appearance in Canto 18, and carries 
this style to its height, is no less remarkable as an anticipation 
of the most impudent portraits of professed worldliness, and 
seems to warrant the suspicions entertained respecting the grosser 
sceptics of that age, while it shows the light in which they were 
regarded by the more refined. In Margutte's panegyrics upon 
what he liked, appear to be the seeds of Berni and his followers. 
One of the best things to be said of the serious characters of 
Pulci, and where he has the advantage of Ariosto himself, is 
that you know them with more distinctness, and become more 
personally interested in them as people like yourself; whereas, 
in Ariosto, with all his humanity, the knights are too much of 
mere knights, — warlike animals. Their flesh and blood is too 
much encrusted by their armor. Even Rubbi, the quaint and 
formal editor of the Parnaso Italiano, with all his courtesies 
towards established things, says, in distinguishing the effect of 
three great poets of Italy, that " You will adore Ariosto, you 
will admire Tasso, but you will love Pulci." The alliteration 
suits our critic's vivacity better : — " In fine, tu adorerai l'Arios- 
to, tu ammirerai il Tasso, ma tu amerai il Pulci." 

PROSE TRANSLATION OF THE BEGINNING OF THE MORGANTE MAG- 

GIORE. 

— Twelve Paladins (saith the poet) had the emperor Charle- 
magne in his court ; and the most wise and famous of them was 
Orlando. It is of him I am about to speak, and of his friend Mor- 
gante, and of Gan the Traitor, who beguiled him to his death 



128 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxil 

in Roncesvalles, where he sounded his horn so mightily after the 
Dolorous Rout. 

It was Easter, and Charles had all his court with him in Pa- 
ris, making high feasts and triumph. There was Orlando, the 
first among them, and Ogier the Dane, and Astolfo the English- 
man, and Ansuigi : and there came Angiotin of Bayonne, and 
Uliviero, and the gentle Berlinghieri ; and there was also Avo- 
lio, and Avino, and Otho of Normandy, and Richard, and the 
wise Namo, and the aged Salamon, and Walter from Monlione, 
and Baldwin who was the son of the wretched Gan. The son 
of Pepin was too happy, and oftentimes fairly groaned for joy 
at seeing all his Paladins together. 

But Fortune stands watching in secret, to baffle our designs. 
While Charles was thus hugging himself with delight, Orlando 
governed everything at court, and this made Gan burst with 
envy ; so that he began one day talking with Charles after the 
following manner : — " Are we always to have Orlando for our 
master ? I have thought of speaking to you about it a thousand 
times. Orlando has a great deal too much presumption. Here 
are we, counts, dukes, and kings, at your service, but not at 
his : and we have resolved not to be governed by a boy. You 
began in Aspramont to give him to understand how valiant he 
was, and that he did great things at that fountain ; whereas if 
it had not been for the good Gerard, I know very well where 
the victory would have been. The truth is, he has an eye upon 
the crown. This, Charles, is the worthy who has deserved so 
much ! All your generals are afflicted at it. As for me, I shall 
repass those mountains over which I came to you with seventy- 
two counts. Do you take him for a Mars V 

Orlando happened to hear these words as he sat apart, and 
it displeased him with Gan that he should speak so, but much 
more that Charles should believe him. He would have killed 
Gan, if Uliviero had not prevented him and taken his sword 
Durlindana out of his hand ; nay, he could have almost killed 
Charlemagne himself; but at last he went away from Paris by 
himself, raging with scorn and grief. He borrowed as he went, 
of Ermellina the wife of Ogier, the Dane's sword Cortana and 
his horse Rondel, and proceeded on his way to Brava. His 



CHAP. LXII.] PULCI. 129 

wife, Alda the Fair, hastened to embrace him ; but while she 
was saying, " Welcome, my Orlando," he was going to strike her 
with his sword, for his head was bewildered, and he took her for 
Ganellone. The fair Alda marvelled greatly, but Orlando re- 
collected himself, and she took hold of the bridle, and he leaped 
from his horse, and told her all that had passed, and rested him- 
self with her for some days. 

He then took his leave, being still carried away by his dis- 
dain, and resolved to pass over into Pagan-land ; and as he 
rode, he thought, every step of the way, of the traitor Gan \ and 
so, riding on wherever the road took him, he reached the con- 
fines between the Christian countries and the Pagan, and came 
upon an abbey, situate in a dark place in a desert. 

Now above the abbey was a great mountain, inhabited by 
three fierce giants, one of whom was named Passamonte, ano- 
ther Alabastro, and the third Morgante ; and these giants used 
to disturb the abbey, by throwing things down upon it from the 
mountain with slings, so that the poor little monks could not go 
out to fetch wood or water. Orlando knocked, but nobody 
would open till the abbot was spoken to. At last the abbot came 
himself, and opening the door, bade him welcome. The good 
man told him the reason of the delay, and said that since the 
arrival of the giants, they had been so perplexed that they did 
not know what to do. " Our ancient fathers in the desert," 
quoth he, " were rewarded according to their holiness. It is 
not to be supposed that they lived only upon locusts ; doubtless, 
it also rained manna upon them from heaven ; but here one 
is regaled with stones, which the giants rain upon us from the 
mountain. These are our nice bits and relishes. The fiercest 
of the giants, Morgante, plucks up pines and other great trees 
by the roots, and casts them on us." While they were talking 
thus in the cemetery, there came a stone, which seemed as if it 
would break Rondel's back. " For God's sake, cavalier, 5 ' said 
the abbot, " come in, for the manna is falling." " My dear ab- 
bot," answered Orlando, " this fellow, methinks, does not wish 
to let my horse feed ; he wants to cure him of being restive \ 
the stone seems as if it came from a good arm." " Yes," re- 
plied the holy father, " I did not deceive you. I think, some 
10 



130 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxii. 

day or other, they will cast the mountain upon us." Orlando 
quieted his horse Rondel, and then sat down to a meal ; after 
which he said, " Abbot, I must go and return the present that 
has been made to my horse/ 5 The abbot with great tenderness 
endeavored to dissuade him, but in vain ; upon which he cross- 
ed him on the forehead, and said, " Go then, and the blessing of 
God be with you." 

Orlando scaled the mountain, and came where Passamonte 
was, who seeing him alone, measured him with his eyes and 
asked him if he would stay with him for a page, promising to 
make him comfortable. "Stupid Saracen," said Orlando, "I 
come to you, according to the will of God, to be your death, and 
not your foot-boy. You have displeased his servants here, and 
are no longer to be endured, dog that you are." 

Non puo piu comportarti can, mastino. 

The giant, finding himself thus insulted, ran in a fury to arm 
him, and returning to Orlando, slung at him a large stone, 
which struck him on the head with such force, as not only made 
his helmet ring again, but felled him to the earth. Passamonte 
thought he was dead. " What," said he, retiring to disarm 
himself, " could have brought that paltry fellow here V 3 

But Christ never forsakes his followers. While the giant went 
to disarm himself, Orlando recovered, and cried aloud, " Giant, 
where are you going ? Do you think that you have killed me ? 
Turn back, for unless you have wings, you shall not escape me, 
dog of a renegade." The giant greatly marvelling, turned 
back and stooping to pick up a stone, Orlando, who had Cortana 
naked in his hand, cleft his skull ; and cursing Mahomet, the 
giant tumbled, dying and blaspheming, to the ground. Blas- 
pheming fell the sour-hearted and cruel wretch ; but Orlando, 
in the meanwhile, thanked the Father and the Word. 

The Paladin went on, seeking for Alabastro, the second giant ; 
who, when he saw him, endeavored to pluck up a great piece of 
stony earth by the roots. "Eo, ho!" cried Orlando, "what, 
you think to throw a stone, do you ?" Then Alabastro took his 
sling, and flung at him so large a fragment as obliged Orlando 
to defend himself, for if it had struck him, he would no more 



CHAP. LXIl] PULCI. 131 

have needed a surgeon ; but collecting his strength, he thrust 
his sword into the giant's breast, and the loggerhead fell dead. 

Morgante, the third giant, had a palace made of earth, and 
boughs, and shingles, in which he shut himself up at night. Or- 
lando knocked, and disturbed the giant from his sleep, who came 
staring to the door like a madman, for he had had a bewildering 
dream. " Who knocks there ? " " You will know too soon," 
answered Orlando : "lam come to make you do penance for 
your sins, like your brothers. Divine Providence has sent me 
to avenge the wrongs of the monks upon the whole set of you ; 
and I have to tell you, that Passamonte and Alabastro are al- 
ready as cold as a couple of pilasters." " Noble knight," said 
Morgante, " do me no ill ; but if you are a Christian, tell me in 
courtesy who you are." " I will satisfy you of my faith," re- 
plied Orlando : " I adore Christ ; and, if you please, you may 
adore him also." 

" I have had a strange vision," replied Morgante, with a low 
voice : " I was assailed by a dreadful serpent, and called upon 
Mahomet in vain ; then I called upon your God, who was cruci- 
fied, and he succored me, and I was delivered from the serpent ; 
so I am disposed to become a Christian." 

" If you keep in this mind," returned Orlando, " you shall 
worship the true God, and come with me and be my companion, 
and I will love you with perfect love. Your idols are false and 
vain ; the true God is the God of the Christians. Deny the un- 
just and villainous worship of your Mahomet, and be baptized 
in the name of my God, who alone is worthy." " I am content," 
said Morgante. Then Orlando embraced him, and said, " I will 
lead you to the abbey." " Let us go quickly," replied Mor- 
gante, for he was impatient to make his peace with the monks. 
Orlando rejoiced, saying " My good brother, and devout withal, 
you must ask pardon of the abbot ; for God has enlightened you, 
and accepted you, and he would have you practise humility." 
" Yes," said Morgante, " thanks to you, your God shall hence- 
forth be my God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose 
of me as you will ;" and he told him that he was Orlando. 

" Blessed Jesus be thanked," said the giant, " for I have 
always heard you called a perfect knight ; and as I said, I will 



132 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxii. 

follow you all my life through." And so conversing they went 
together towards the abbey, and by the way Orlando talked with 
Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to console him, saying 
they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and our scripture 
says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we 
must submit to the will of God. " The doctors of our church," 
continued he, " are all agreed, that if those who are glorified in 
heaven, were to feel pity for their miserable kindred, who lie in 
such horrible confusion in hell, their beatitude would come to 
nothing ; and this, you see, would plainly be unjust on the part 
of God. But such is the firmness of their faith, that what ap- 
pears good to him, appears good to them. Do what he may, they 
hold it to be done well, and that it is impossible for him to err ; 
so that if their very fathers and mothers are suffering everlast- 
ing punishment, it does not disturb them an atom. This is the 
custom, I assure you, in the choirs above." 

" A word to the wise," said Morgante ; " you shall see if I 
grieve for my brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will 
of God, and behave myself like an angel. So dust to dust ; and 
now let us enjoy ourselves. I will cut off their hands, all four 
of them, and take them to these holy monks, that they may be 
sure they are dead, and not fear to go out alone into the desert. 
They will then be sure also that the Lord has purified me, and 
taken me out of darkness, and assured to me the kingdom of 
heaven." So saying, the giant cut off the hands of his brethren, 
and left their bodies to the beasts and birds. 

They went to the abbey, where the abbot was expecting Or- 
lando in great anxiety ; but the monks not knowing what had 
happened, ran to the abbot in great haste and alarm, saying, 
" Will you suffer this giant to come in ?" And when the abbot 
saw the giant he changed countenance. Orlando perceiving 
him thus disturbed, made haste and said, " Abbot, peace be with 
you ! The giant is a Christian ; he believes in Christ, and has 
renounced his false prophet, Mahomet." And Morgante show- 
ing the hands in proof of his faith, the abbot thanked heaven 
with great contentment of mind. 

The abbot did much honor to Morgante, comparing him with 
St. Paul ; and they rested there many days. One day, wander- 



chap, lxii.] PULCI. 133 

ing over the abbey, they entered a room where the abbot kept a 
quantity of armor ; and Morgante saw a bow which pleased 
him, and he fastened it on. Now there was in the place a great 
scarcity of water ; and Orlando said, like his good brother, 
u Morgante, I wish you would fetch us some water.". " Com- 
mand me as you please," said he ; and placing a great tub upon 
his shoulders, he went towards a spring at which he had been 
accustomed to drink, at the foot of the mountain. Having 
reached the spring, he suddenly heard a great noise in the 
forest. He took an arrow from the quiver, placed it in the bow, 
and raising his head, saw a great herd of swine rushing towards 
the spring where he stood. Morgante shot one of them clean 
through the head, and laid him sprawling. Another, as if in 
revenge, ran towards the giant, without giving him time to use 
another arrow ; so he lent him a cuff on the head, which broke 
the bone, and killed him also ; which stroke the rest seeing, fled 
in haste through the valley. Morgante then placed the tub full 
of water upon one shoulder and the two porkers on the other, 
and returned to the abbey, which was at some distance, without 
spilling a drop. 

The monks were delighted to see the fresh water, but still 
more to see the pork ; for there is no animal to whom food comes 
amiss. They let their breviaries therefore go to sleep awhile, 
and fell heartily to work, so that the cats and dogs had reason 
to lament the polish of the bones. 

" Now, why do we stay here, doing nothing ?" said Orlando, 
one day, to Morgante • and he shook hands with the abbot, and 
told him he must take his leave. " I must go," said he, " and 
make up for lost time. I ought to have gone long ago, my good 
father; but I cannot tell you what I feel within me, at the con- 
tent I have enjoyed here in your company. I shall bear in mind 
and in heart with me for ever, the abbot, the abbey, and this 
desert, so great is the love they have raised in me in so short a 
time. The great God, who reigns above, must thank you for 
me, in his own abode. Bestow on us your benediction, and do 
not forget us in your pra}^ers." 

When the abbot heard the County Orlando talk thus, his heart 
melted within him for tenderness, and he said, " Knight, if we 



134 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxii. 

have failed in any courtesy due to your prowess and great gen- 
tleness (and, indeed, what we have done has been but little), 
pray put it to the account of our ignorance, and of the place 
which we inhabit. We are but poor men of the cloister, better 
able to regale you with masses, and orisons, and paternosters, 
than with dinners and suppers. You have so taken this heart 
of mine by the many noble qualities I have seen in you, that I 
shall be with you still wherever you go ; and, on the other hand, 
you will always be present here with me. This seems a con- 
tradiction ; but you are wise, and will take my meaning dis- 
creetly. You have saved the very life and spirit within us ; 
for so much perturbation had those giants cast about our place, 
that the way to the Lord among us was blocked up. May he 
who sent you into these woods reward your justice and piety, by 
which we are delivered from our trouble ; thanks be to him and 
to you. We shall all be disconsolate at your departure. We 
shall grieve that we cannot detain you among us for months 
and years ; but you do not wear these weeds ; you bear arms 
and armor ; and you may possibly merit as well, in carrying 
those, as in wearing this cap. You read your Bible, and your 
virtue has been the means of showing the giant the way to 
heaven. Go in peace, and prosper, wherever you may be. I 
do not ask your name ; but if ever I am asked who it was that 
came among us, I shall say that it was an angel from God. If 
there is any armor, or other thing that you would have, go into 
the room where it is, and take it." " If you have any armor 
that would suit my companion/' replied Orlando, " that I will 
accept with pleasure." "Come and see," said the abbot; and 
they went into a room that was full of old armor. Morgante 
examined everything, but could find nothing large enough, ex- 
cept a rusty breast-plate, which fitted him marvellously. It had 
belonged to an enormous giant, who was killed there of old, by 
Milo of Angrante. There was a painting on the wall, which 
told the whole story : how the giant had laid cruel and long siege 
to the abbey ; and how he had been overthrown at last by the 
great Milo. Orlando seeing this, said within himself: — "Oh 
God ! unto whom all things are known, how came Milo here, 
who destroyed this giant ?" And reading certain inscriptions 



chap, lxii.] PULCI. 135 

which were there, he could no longer keep a firm countenance, 
but the tears ran down his cheeks. 

When the abbot saw Orlando weep, and his brow redden, and 
the light of his eyes become childlike, for sweetness, he asked 
him the reason ; but finding him still dumbly affected, he said, 
" I do not know whether you are overpowered by admiration 
of what is painted in this chamber. You must know that I am 
of high descent, though not through lawful wedlock. I believe 
I may say, I am nephew or sister's son to no less a man than 
that Rinaldo, who was so great a Paladin in the world, though 
my own father was not of a lawful mother. Ansuigi was his 
name ; my own, out in the world, was Chiaramonte, and this 
Milo was my father's brother. Ah, gentle baron, for blessed 
Jesus' sake, tell me what name is yours !" Orlando, all glow- 
ing with affection, and bathed in tears, replied, " My dear abbot 
and kinsman, he before you is your Orlando." Upon this, they 
ran for tenderness into each other's arms, weeping on both sides 
with a sovereign affection, which was too high to be expressed. 
The abbot was so overjoyed that he seemed as if he would never 
have done embracing Orlando. " By what fortune," said the 
knight, " do I find you in this obscure place 1 Tell me, my 
dear father, how was it you became a monk, and did not follow 
arms, like myself and the rest of us?" 

" It is the will of God," replied the abbot, hastening to give 
his feelings utterance. " Many and divers are the paths he 
points out for us, by which to arrive at his city : some walk it 
with the sword, some with the pastoral staff. Nature makes 
the inclination different, and therefore there are different ways 
for us to take ; enough if we all arrive safely at one and the 
same place, the last as well as the first. We are all pilgrims 
through many kingdoms. We all wish to go to Rome, Orlando ; 
but we go picking out our journey through different roads. 
Such is the trouble in body and soul brought upon us by that sin 
of the old apple. Day and night am I here with my book in 
hand ; day and night do you ride about, holding your sword, and 
sweating oft both in sun and shadow, and all to get round at 
last to the home from which we departed — I say all out of anxi- 
ety and hope, to get back unto our home of old." And the 
giant hearing them talk of these things, shed tears also. 



136 THE INDICATOR. [chap lxiil 



CHAPTER LXIIL 

My Books.* 

Sitting, last winter, among my books, and walled round with 
all the comfort and protection which they and my fire-side could 
afford me ; to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my 
writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and 
the feeling of the warm fire at my feet ; I began to consider how 
I loved the authors of those books : how I loved them, too, not 
only for the imaginative pleasures they afford me, but for their 
making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in 
contact with them. I looked sideways at my Spenser, my Theo- 
critus, and my Arabian Nights ; then above them at my Italian 
poets ; then behind me at my Dryden and Pope, my romances, 
and my Boccaccio ; then on my left side at my Chaucer, who lay 
on a writing-desk; and thought how natural it was in C. L. to 
give a kiss to an old folio, as I once saw him do to Chapman's 
Homer. At the same time I wondered how he could sit in that 
front room of his with nothing but a few unfeeling tables and 
chairs, or at best a few engravings in trim frames, instead of 
putting a couple of arm-chairs into the back-room with the books 
in it, where there is but one window. Would I were there, with 
both the chairs properly filled, and one or two more besides ! 
" We had talk, sir," — the only talk capable of making one for- 
get the books. 

I entrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the 
weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to 
see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movea- 
bles ; if a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another 

* This and the following paper was written during the author's residence 
in Italy. The use of the first person singular instead of plural, was invol- 
untary. 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 137 

glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with 
my books, 1 mean it literally. I like to lean my head against 
them. Living in a southern climate, though in a part sufficient- 
ly northern to feel the winter, I was obliged, during that season, 
to take some of the books out of the study, and hang them up 
near the fire-place in the sitting-room, which is the only room that 
has such a convenience. I therefore walled myself in, as well 
as I could, in the manner above-mentioned. I took a walk every 
day, to the astonishment of the Genoese, who used to huddle 
against a bit of sunny wall, like flies on a chimney-piece ; but 
I did this only that I might so much the more enjoy my English 
evening. The fire was a wood fire instead of a coal ; but I im- 
agined myself in the country. I remembered at the very worst, 
that one end of my native land was not nearer the other than 
England is to Italy. 

While writing this article I am in my study again. Like the 
rooms in all houses in this country which are not hovels, it is 
handsome and ornamented. On one side it looks towards a gar- 
den and the mountains ; on another, to the mountains and the 
sea. What signifies all this ? I turn my back upon the sea ; I 
shut up even one of the side windows looking upon the moun- 
tains, and retain no prospect but that of the trees. On the right 
and left of me are book-shelves ; a book-case is affectionately 
open in front of me ; and thus kindly inclosed with my books 
and the green leaves, I write. If all this is too luxurious and 
effeminate, of all luxuries it is the one that leaves you the most 
strength. And this is to be said for scholarship in general. It 
unfits a man for activity, for his bodily part in the world ; but it 
often doubles both the power and the sense of his mental duties; 
and with much indignation against his body, and more against 
those who tyrannise over the intellectual claims of mankind, the 
man of letters, like the magician of old, is prepared " to play the 
devil " with the great men of this world, in a style that aston- 
ishes both the sword and the toga. 

I do not like this fine large study. I like elegance. I like 
room to breathe in, and even walk about, when I want to breathe 
and walk about. I like a great library next my study ; but for 
the study itself, give me a small snug place, almost entirely walled 



138 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiii. 

\vith books. There should be only one window in it, looking 
upon trees. Some prefer a place with few, or no books at all — 
nothing but a chair or a table, like Epictetus ; but I should say 
that these were philosophers, not lovers of books, if I did not re- 
collect that Montaigne was both. He had a study in a round 
tower, walled as aforesaid. It is true, one forgets one's books 
while writing — at least they say so. For my part, I think I 
have them in a sort of sidelong mind's eye ; like a second 
thought, which is none — like a water-fall, or a whispering wind. 

I dislike a grand library to study in. I mean an immense 
apartment, with books all in Museum order, especially wire- 
safed. I say nothing against the Museum itself, or public libra- 
ries. They are capital places to go to, but not to sit in ; and 
talking of this, I hate to read in public, and in strange company. 
The jealous silence ; the dissatisfied looks of the messengers ; 
the inability to help yourself; the not knowing whether you really 
ought to trouble the messengers, much less the gentleman in 
black, or brown, who is, perhaps, half a trustee ; with a variety 
of other jarrings between privacy and publicity, prevent one's 
settling heartily to work. They say " they manage these things 
better in France ;" and I dare say they do ; but I think I should 
feel still more distrait in France, in spite of the benevolence of 
the servitors, and the generous profusion of pen, ink, and paper. 
I should feel as if I were doing nothing but interchanging ameni- 
ties with polite writers. 

A grand private library, which the master of the house also 
makes his study, never looks to me like a real place of books, 
much less of authorship. I cannot take kindly to it. It is cer- 
tainly not out of envy ; for three parts of the books are generally 
trash, and I can seldom think of the rest and the proprietor to- 
gether. It reminds me of a fine gentleman, of a collector, of a 
patron, of Gil Bias and the Marquis of Marialva ; of anything 
but genius and comfort. I have a particular hatred of a round 
table (not the Round Table, for that was a dining one) covered 
and irradiated with books, and never met with one in the house 
of a clever man but once. It is the reverse of Montaigne's 
Round Tower. Instead of bringing the books around you, they 
all seem turning another way, and eluding your hands. 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 139 

Conscious of my propriety and comfort in these matters, I take 
an interest in the book-cases as well as the books of my friends. 
I long to meddle, and dispose them after my own notions. When 
they see this confession, they will acknowledge the virtue I have 
practised. I believe I did mention his book-room to C. L. and I 
think he told me that he often sat there when alone. It would 
be hard not to believe him. His library, though not abounding 
in Greek or Latin (which are the only things to help some per- 
sons to an idea of literature), is anything but superficial. The 
depth of philosophy and poetry are there, the innermost passages 
of the human heart. It has some Latin too. It has also a hand- 
some contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a selec- 
tion made at precious intervals from the book-stalls ; — now a 
Chaucer at nine and two- pence ; now a Montaigne or a Sir Tho- 
mas Browne at two shillings ; now a Jeremy Taylor ; a Spino- 
za ; an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney ; and 
the books are " neat as imported." The very perusal of the 
backs is a " discipline of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes 
his place again with an old Radical, friend : there Jeremy Col- 
lier is at peace with Dryden : there the lion, Martin Luther, lies 
down with the Quaker lamb, Sewell ; there Guzman d'Alfarache 
thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has 
his claims admitted. Even the " high fantastical " Duchess of 
Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave 
honors, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the 
constitutions of her maids. There is an approach to this in the 
library of W. C. who also includes Italian among his humani- 
ties. W. H., I believe, has no books, except mine ; but he has 
Shakspeare and Rousseau by heart. N., who though not a 
book-man by profession, is fond of those who are, and who loves 
his volume enough to read it across the fields, has his library in 
the common sitting-room, which is hospitable. H. R.'s books are 
all too modern and finely bound, which however is not his fault, 
for they were left Lim by will, — not the most kindly act of the 
testator. Suppose a man were to bequeath us a great japan chest 
three feet by four, with an injunction that it was always to stand 
on the tea-table. I remember borrowing a book of H. R. which, 
having lost, I replaced with a copy equally well bound. I am 



140 THE INDICATOR, [chap, lxiii. 

not sure I should have been in such haste, even to return the 
book, had it been a common-looking volume ; but the splendor of 
the loss dazzled me into this ostentatious piece of propriety. I 
set about restoring it as if I had diminished his fortunes, and 
waived the privilege a friend has to use a man's things as his 
own. I may venture upon this ultra-liberal theory, not only be- 
cause candor compels me to say that I hold it to a greater extent, 
with Montaigne, but because I have been a meek son in the 
family of book-losers. I may affirm, upon a moderate calcula- 
tion, that I have lent arid lost in my time (and I am eight-and- 
thirty), half-a-dozen decent sized libraries, — I mean books enough 
to fill so many ordinary book-cases. I have never complained ; 
and self-love, as well as gratitude, makes me love those who do 
not complain of me. 

I own I borrow books with as much facility as I lend. I can- 
not see a work that interests me on another person's shelf, with- 
out a wish to carry it off: but, I repeat, that I have been much 
more sinned against than sinning in the article of non-return ; 
and am scrupulous in the article of intention. I never had 
a felonious intent upon a book but once ; and then I shall only 
say, it was under circumstances so peculiar, that I cannot but 
look upon the conscience that induced me to restore it, as having 
sacrificed the spirit of its very self to the letter ; and I have a 
grudge against it accordingly. Some people are unwilling to 
lend their books. I have a special grudge against them, par- 
ticularly those who accompany their unwillingness with uneasy 
professions to the contrary, and smiles, like Sir Fretful Plagiary. 
The friend who helped to spoil my notions of property, or rather 
to make them too good for the world " as it goes," taught me also 
to undervalue my squeamishness in refusing to avail myself of 
the books of these gentlemen. Fie showed me how it was doing 
good to all parties to put an ordinary face on the matter ; though 
I know his own blushed not a little sometimes in doing it, even 
when the good to be done was for another. I feel, in truth, that 
even when anger inclines me to exercise this privilege of philo- 
sophy, it is more out of revenge than contempt. I fear that in 
allowing myself to borrow books, I sometimes make extremes 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 141 

meet in a very sinful manner, and do it out of a refined revenge. 
It is like eating a miser's beef at him. 

I yield to none in my love of bookstall urbanity. I have spent 
as happy moments over the stalls, as any literary apprentice boy 
who ought to be moving onwards. But I confess my weakness 
in liking to see some of my favorite purchases neatly bound. 
The books I like to have about me most are, Spenser, Chaucer, 
the minor poems of Milton, the Arabian Nights, Theocritus, 
Ariosto, and such old good-natured speculations as Plutarch's 
Morals. For most of these I like a plain good old binding, never 
mind how old, provided it wears well ; but my Arabian Nights 
may be bound in as fine and flowery a style as possible, and I 
should love an engraving to every dozen pages. Book-prints of 
all sorts, bad and good, take with me as much as when I was a 
child ; and I think some books, such as Prior's Poems, ought al- 
ways to have portraits of the authors. Prior's airy face with his 
cap on, is like having his company. From early association, no 
edition of Milton pleases me so much, as that in which there are 
pictures of the Devil with brute ears, dressed like a Roman 
General : nor of Bunyan, as the one containing the print of the 
Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the Devil whispering in 
Christian's ear, or old Pope by the way-side, and 

"Vanity Fair, 
With the pilgrims suffering there." 

I delight in the recollection of the puzzle I used to have with the 
frontispiece of the Tale of a Tub, of my real horror at the sight 
of that crawling old man representing Avarice, at the beginning 
of Enfield's Speaker, the Looking -Glass, or some such book; and 
even of the careless school-boy hats, and the prim stomachers 
and cottage bonnets, of such golden-age antiquities as the Village 
School. The oldest and most worn-out wood-cut, representing 
King Pippin, Goody Two Shoes, or the grim Soldan, sitting with 
three staring blots for his eyes and mouth, his sceptre in one 
hand, and his other five fingers raised and spread in admiration 
at the feasts of the Gallant London Prentice, cannot excite in 
me a feeling of ingratitude. Cooke's edition of the British Poets 
and Novelists came out when I was at school, for which reason I 



142 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiii. 

never could put up with Suttaby's or Walker's publications, ex- 
cept in the case of such works as the Fairy Tales, which Mr. 
Cooke did not publish. Besides, they are too cramped, thick, 
and mercenary ; and the pictures are all frontispieces. They 
do not come in at the proper places. Cooke realized the old 
woman's beau-ideal of a prayer-book, — " A little book, with a 
great deal of matter, and a large type :" — for the type was really 
large for so small a volume. Shall I ever forget his Collins and 
Grey, books at once so "superbly ornamented" and so incon- 
ceivably cheap 1 Sixpence could procure much before ; but 
never could it procure so much as then, or was at once so much 
respected, and so little cared for. His artist Kirk was the best 
artist, except Stothard, that ever designed for periodical works ; 
and I will venture to add (if his name rightly announces his 
country) the best artist Scotland ever produced, except Wilkie, 
but he unfortunately had not enough of his country in him to 
keep him from dying young. His designs for Milton and the 
Arabian Nights, his female extricated from the water in the 
Tales of the Genii, and his old hag issuing out of the chest of 
the Merchant Abadah in the same book, are before me now, as 
vividly as they were then. He possessed elegance and the sense 
of beauty in no ordinary degree ; though they sometimes played 
a trick or so of foppery. I shall never forget the gratitude with 
which I received an odd number of Akenside, value sixpence, 
one of the set of that poet, which a boarder distributed among 
three or four of us, " with his mother's compliments." The present 
might have been more lavish, but I hardly thought of that. I re- 
member my number ; it was the one in which there is a picture of 
the poet on a sofa, with Cupid coming to him, and the words under- 
neath, " Tempt me no more, insidious Love !" The picture and the 
number appeared to me equally divine. I cannot help thinking 
to this day, that it is right and natural in a gentleman to sit in a 
stage-dress, on that particular kind of sofa, though on no other, 
with that exclusive hat and feathers on his head, telling Cupid 
to begone with a tragic air. 

I love an author the more for having been himself a lover of 

books. The idea of an ancient library perplexes our sympa- 

; thy by its map-like volumes, rolled upon cylinders. Our im- 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 143 

agination cannot take kindly to a yard of wit, or to thirty inches 
of moral observation, rolled out like linen in a draper's shop. 
But we conceive of Plato as of a lover of books; of Aristotle 
certainly ; of Plutarch, Pliny. Horace, Julian, and Marcus Au- 
relius. Virgil, too, must have been one ; and, after a fashion, 
Martial. May I confess, that the passage which I recollect with 
the greatest pleasure in Cicero, is where he says that books de- 
light us at home, and are no impediment abroad ; travel with us, 
ruralise with us. His period is rounded off to some purpose : 
" Delectant domi, non impediunt foris; peregrinantur, rusti- 
cantur." 1 am so much of this opinion, that I do not care to be 
anywhere without having a book or books at hand, and like Dr. 
Orkborne, in the novel of Camilla, stuff the coach or post-chaise 
with them whenever I travel. As books, however, become an- 
cient, the love of them becomes more unequivocal and con- 
spicuous. The ancients had little of what we call learning. 
They made it. They were also no very eminent buyers of 
books — they made books for posterity. It is true, that it is not 
at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. 
The scholar, in Chaucer, who would rather have 

At his beddes head 
A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red, 
Of Aristotle and his philosophy, 
Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltrie. — 

doubtless beat all our modern collectors in his passion for read- 
ing ; but books must at least exist, and have acquired an emi- 
nence, befove their lovers can make themselves known. There 
must be a possession, also, to perfect the communion ; and the 
mere contact is much, even when our mistress speaks an un- 
known language. Dante puts Homer, the great ancient, in his 
Elysium, upon trust ; but a few years afterwards, Homer, the 
book, made its appearance in Italy, and Petrarch, in a transport, 
put it upon his book-shelves, where he adored it, like " the un- 
known God." Petrarch ought to be the god of the bibliomaniacs, 
for he was a collector and a man of genius, which is a union 
that does not often happen. He copied out, with his own precious 
hand, the manuscripts he rescued from time, and then produced 



144 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiii. 

others for time to reverence. With his head upon a book he 
died. Boccaccio, his friend, was another; nor can we look upon 
the longest and most tiresome works he wrote (for he did write 
some tiresome ones, in spite of the gaiety of his Decameron), 
without thinking, that in the resuscitation of the world of letters, 
it must have been natural to a man of genius to add to the existing 
stock of volumes, at whatsoever price. I always pitch my com- 
pletest idea of a lover of beoks, either in these dark ages, as 
they are called, 

(Cui cieco a torto il cieco volgo appella) — 

or in the gay town days of Charles II., or a little afterwards. 
In both times the portrait comes out by the force of contrast. 
In the first, I imagine an age of iron warfare and energy, with 
solitary retreats, in which the monk or the hooded scholar walks 
forth to meditate, his precious volume under his arm. In the 
other, I have a triumphant example of the power of books and 
wit to contest the victory with sensual pleasure : — Rochester, 
staggering home to pen a satire in the style of Monsieur Boileau ; 
Butler, cramming his jolly duodecimo with all the learning that 
he laughed at ; and a new race of book poets come up, who, in 
spite of their periwigs and petit-maitres, talk as romantically of 
" the bays," as if they were priests of Delphos. It was a vic- 
torious thing in books to beguile even the old French of their 
egotism, or at least to share it with them. Nature never pre- 
tended to do as much. And here is the difference between the 
two ages, or between any two ages in which genius and art 
predominate. In the one, books are loved because they are the 
records of nature and her energies ; in the other, because they 
are the records of those records, or evidences of the importance 
of the individuals, and proofs of our descent in the new and 
imperishable aristocracy. This is the reason why rank (with 
few exceptions) is so jealous of literature, and loves to appro- 
priate or withhold the honors of it, as if they were so many toys 
and ribbons, like its own. It has an instinct that the two preten- 
sions are incompatible. When Montaigne (a real lover of books) 
affected the order of St. Michael, and pleased himself with pos- 
sessing that fugitive little piece of importance, he did it because 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 145 

he would pretend to be above nothing that he really felt, or that 
was felt by men in general ; but at the same time he vindicated 
his natural superiority over this weakness by praising and loving 
all higher and lasting things, and by placing his best glory in 
doing homage to the geniuses that had gone before him. He did 
not endeavor to think that an immortal renown was a fashion, 
like that of the cut of his scarf; or that by under- valuing the 
one, he should go shining down to posterity in the other, perpetual 
lord of Montaigne and of the ascendant. 

There is a period of modern times, at which the love of books 
appears to have been of a more decided nature than at either of 
these — I mean the age just before and after the Reformation, or 
rather all that period when book-writing was confined to the 
learned languages. Erasmus was the god of it. Bacon, a mighty 
book-man, saw, among his other sights, the great advantage of 
loosening the vernacul ar tongue, and wrote both Latin and English. 
I allow this is the greatest closeted age of books ; of old scholars 
sitting in dusty studies ; of heaps of " illustrious obscure," ren- 
dering themselves more illustrious and more obscure by retreat- 
ing from the " thorny queaches " of Dutch and German names 
into the " vacant interlunar caves" of appellations Latinised or 
translated. I think I see all their volumes now filling the shelves 
of a dozen German convents. The authors are bearded men, 
sitting in old wood-cuts, in caps and gowns, and their books are 
dedicated to princes and statesmen, as illustrious as themselves. 
My old friend Wierus, who wrote a thick book, Be Prcesligiis 
D(z?nonum, was one of them, and had a fancy worthy of his 
sedentary stomach. I will confess, once for all, that I have a 
liking for them all. It is my link with the bibliomaniacs, whom 
I admit into our relationship, because my love is large, and my 
family pride nothing. But still I take my idea of books read 
with a gusto, of companions for bed and board, from the two 
ages before-mentioned. The other is of too book-worn a des- 
cription. There must be both a judgment and a fervor ; a dis- 
crimination and a boyish eagerness ; and (with all due humility) 
something of a point of contact between authors worth reading 
and the reader. How can I take Juvenal into the fields, or 
Valcarenghius Be Aorta Aneurismate to bed with me ? How 
11 



146 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiii. 

could I expect to walk before the face of nature with the one ; 
to tire my elbow properly with the other, before I put out my 
candle, and turn round deliciously on the right side ? Or how 
could I stick up Coke upon Littleton, against something on the 
dinner-table, and be divided between a fresh paragraph, and a 
mouthful of salad ? 

I take our four great English poets to have all been fond of 
reading. Milton and Chaucer proclaim themselves for hard sit- 
ters at books. Spenser's reading is evident by his learning; and 
if there were nothing else to show for it in Shakspeare, his re- 
tiring to his native town, long before old age, would be a proof 
of it. It is impossible for a man to live in solitude without such 
assistance, unless he is a metaphysician or mathematician, or 
the dullest of mankind ; and any country town would be solitude 
to Shakspeare, after the bustle of a metropolis and a theatre. 
Doubtless he divided his time between his books, and his bowl- 
ing-green, and his daughter Susanna. It is pretty certain, also, 
that he planted, and rode on horseback ; and there is evidence 
of all sorts to make it clear, that he must have occasionally 
joked with the blacksmith, and stood godfather for his neighbors' 
children. Chaucer's account of himself must be quoted, for the 
delight and sympathy of all true readers — 

And as for me, though that I can but lite, 

On bookes for to rede I me delite, 

And to hem yeve I faith and full credence, 

And in mine herte have hem in reverence 

So hertely, that there is game none, 

That fro my bookes maketh me to gone, 

But it is seldome on the holy daie ; 

Save certainly whan that the month of May 

Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing, 

And that the floures ginnen for to spring. 

Farewell my booke and my devocion. 

The Legend of Good Women. 

And again, in the second book of his House of Fame, where 
the eagle addresses him : — 

— Thou wilt make 



At night full oft thine head to ake, 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 147 

And in thy study as thou writest, 
And evermore of Love enditest, 
In honor of him and his praisings, 
And in his folkes furtherings, 

And in his matter all devisest, 
And not him ne his folke despisest, 
Although thou mayst go in the daunse 
Of hem, that him list not advance ; 
Therefore as I said, ywis, 
Jupiter considreth well this. 
And also, beausire, of other things ; 
That is, thou hast no tidings 
Of Loves folke, if they be glade, 
Ne of nothing else that God made, 
And not only fro ferre countree, 
But no tidings commen to thee, 
Not of thy very neighboris, 
That dwellen almost at thy dores ; 
Thou hearest neither that ne this, 
For whan thy labor all done is, 
And hast made all thy rekenings,* 

nstead of rest and of new things, 
Thou goest home to thine house anone 5 
And all so dombe as anie stone, 
Thou sittest at another booke, 

Till fully dazed is thy looke. 

After I think of the bookishness of Chaucer and Milton, I 
always make a great leap to Prior and Fenton. Prior was first 
noticed, when a boy, by Lord Dorset, sitting in his uncle's 
tavern, and reading Horace. He describes himself, years after, 
when Secretary of Embassy at the Hague, as taking the same 
author with him in the Saturday's chaise, in which he and his 
mistress used to escape from town cares into the country, to the 
admiration of Dutch beholders. Fenton was a martyr to con- 
tented scholarship (including a sirloin and a bottle of wine), and 
died among his books, of inactivity. " He rose late," says John- 
son, " and when he had risen, sat down to his books and papers." 
A woman that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she 
said, that he would " lie a-bed and be fed with a spoon." He 
must have had an enviable liver, if he was happy. I must own 
(if my conscience would let me), that I should like to lead, half 

* Chaucer at this time had an office under the government. 



148 THE INDICATOR. chap, txrfi. 

the year, just such a life (women included, though not that 
woman), the other half heing passed in the fields and woods, with 
a cottage just big enough to hold us. Dacier and his wife had 
a pleasant time of it ; both fond of books, both scholars, both 
amiable, both wrapped up in the ancient world, and helping one 
another at their tasks. If they were not happy, matrimony 
would be a rule even without an exception. Pope does not strike 
me as being a bookman ; he was curious rather than enthusi- 
astic ; more nice than wise ; he dabbled in modern Latin poe- 
try, which is a bad symptom. Swift was decidedly a reader ; 
the Tale of a Tub, in its fashion as well as substance, is the 
work of a scholarly wit ; the Battle of the Books is the fancy of 
a lover of libraries. Addison and Steele were too much given 
up to Button's and the town. Periodical writing, though its de- 
mands seem otherwise, is not favorable to reading ; it becomes 
too much a matter of business, and will either be attended to at 
the expense of the writer's books, or books, the very admonishers 
of his industry, will make him idle. Besides, a periodical work, 
to be suitable to its character, and warrant its regular recur- 
rence, must involve something of a gossiping nature, and pro- 
ceed upon experiences familiar to the existing community, or at 
least likely to be received by them in consequence of some pre- 
vious tinge of inclination. You do not pay weekly visits to your 
friends to lecture them, whatever good you may do their minds. 
There will be something compulsory in reading the Ramblers, 
as there is in going to church. Addison and Steele undertook 
to regulate the minor morals of society, and effected a world of 
good, with which scholarship had little to do. Gray was a 
bookman ; he wished to be always lying on sofas, reading 
" eternal new novels of Crebillon and Marivaux." .This is a 
true hand. The elaborate and scientific look of the rest of his 
reading was owing to the necessity of employing himself: he 
had not health and spirits for the literary voluptuousness he de- 
sired. Collins, for the same reason, could not employ himself; 
he was obliged to dream over Arabian tales, to let the light of 
the supernatural world half in upon his eyes. " He loved/' as 
Johnson says (in that strain of music, inspired by tenderness), 
" fairies, genii, giants, and monsters ; he delighted to rove 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 149 

through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnifi- 
cence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian 
gardens." If Collins had had a better constitution, I do not be- 
lieve that he would have written his projected work upon the 
Restoration of Literature, fit as he was by scholarship for the 
task, but he would have been the greatest poet since the days of 
Milton. If his friend Thomas Warton had had a little more of 
his delicacy of organization, the love of books would almost have 
made him a poet. His edition of the minor poems of Milton is a 
wilderness of sweets. It is the only one in which a true lover 
of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation ; though 
I confess I am inclined enough to pardon any notes that resemble 
it, however numerous. The " builded rhyme " stands at the 
top of the page, like a fair edifice with all sorts of flowers and 
fresh waters at its foot. The young poet lives there, served by 
the nymphs and fauns. 

Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades. 
Hue ades, o formose puer : tibi lilia plenis 
Ecce ferunt nymphs calathis : tibi Candida Nais 
Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens, 
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi. 

Among the old writers I must not forget Ben Jonson and 
Donne. Cowley has been already mentioned. His boyish love 
of books, like all the other inclinations of his early life, stuck to 
him to the last ; which is the greatest reward of virtue. I would 
mention Izaak Walton, if I had not a grudge against him. His 
brother fishermen, the divines, were also great fishers of books. 
I have a grudge against them and their divinity. They talk 
much of the devil and divine right, and yet forget what Shak- 
speare says of the devil's friend Nero, that he is " an angler in 
the lake of darkness." Selden was called " the walking library 
of our nation." It is not the pleasantest idea of him ; but the 
library included poetry and wit, as well as heraldry and the 
Jewish doctors. His Table Talk is equally pithy and pleasant, 
and truly worthy of the name, for it implies other speakers. 
Indeed it was actually what it is called, and treasured up 
by his friends. Selden wrote complimentary verses to his 



150 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiii. 

friends the poets, and a commentary on Drayton's Polyolbion. 
Drayton was himself a reader, addicted to all the luxuries of 
scholarship. Chapman sat among his books, like an astrologer 
among his spheres and altitudes. 

How pleasant it is to reflect, that all these lovers of books 
have themselves become books ! What better metamorphosis 
could Pythagoras have desired ! How Ovid and Horace ex- 
ulted in anticipating theirs ! And how the world have justified 
their exultation ! They had a right to triumph over brass and 
marble. It is the only visible change which changes no farther ; 
which generates, and yet is not destroyed. Consider: minds 
themselves are exhausted ; cities perish ; kingdoms are swept 
away, and man weeps with indignation tc think that his own 
body is not immortal. 

Muoiono le citta, muoiono i regni, 

E P uom d' esser mortal par che si sdegni. 

Yet this little body of thought, that lies before me in the shape 
of a book, has existed thousands of years, nor since the invention 
of the press can anything short of an universal convulsion of 
nature abolish it. To a shape like this, so small yet so compre- 
hensive, so slight yet so lasting, so insignificant yet so venerable, 
turns the mighty activity of Homer, and so turning, is enabled 
to live and warm us for ever. To a shape like this turns the 
placid sage of Academus : to a shape like this the grandeur of 
Milton, the exuberance of Spenser, the pungent elegance of Pope, 
and the volatility of Prior. In one small room, like the com- 
pressed spirits of Milton, can be gathered together. 

The assembled souls of all that men held wise. 

May I hope to become the meanest of these existences ? This 
is a question which every author who is a lover of books, asks 
himself some time in his life ; and which must be pardoned, 
because it cannot be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim 
with the poet, 

Oh that my name were number' d among theirs, 
Then gladly would I end my mortal days. 



chap, lxiii.] MY BOOKS. 151 

For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, 
are of consequence to others. But I should like to remain visi- 
ble in this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself, I 
could wish to be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like 
to survive so, were it only for the sake of those who love me in 
private, knowing as I do what a treasure is the possession of a 
friend's mind, when he is no more. At all events, nothing, while 
I live and think, can deprive me of my value for such treasures. 
I can help the appreciation of them while I last, and love them 
till I die ; and perhaps, if fortune turns her face once more in 
kindness upon me before I go, I may chance, some quiet day, to 
lay my overheating temples on a book, and so have the death I 
most envy. 



152 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxiv. 



CHAPTER LXIV. 

Bees, Butterflies, &c., with the consideration of a curious argument, 
drawn from the government of the hive. 

Alexander said, that if he were not Alexander, he should wish 
to be Diogenes. Reader, what sort of animal would you be, if 
you were obliged to be one, and were not a man ? 

Irish Reader : — A woman. 

Oh, ho ! The choice is judicious, but not to the purpose, 
"youdivil :" — we mean, out of the pale of the species. Con- 
sider the question, dear readers, and answer it to your friends 
and consciences. The pastime is pretty, and fetches out the 
character. Nor is there anything in it unworthy the dignity of 
your humanity, as that liberal term may show us, without 
farther reasons. Animals partake with us the gifts of song, and 
beauty, and the affections. They beat us in some things, as in 
the power of flight. The dove has the wings of the angel. 
The meanest reptile has eyes and limbs, as well as Nicholas, 
emperor of all the Russias. Sir Philip Sydney tells us of a 
riding-master at Vienna, who expatiated so eloquently on the 
qualities of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost 
persuaded our illustrious countryman to wish himself a horse. 
A year or two back, everybody in London that had a voice, was 
resolved upon being "a butterfly, born in a bower:" and Gold- 
smith had such a tendency to sympathize with the least sympa- 
thetic part of the creation, that he took a pleasure in fancying 
himself writing an autobiography of fish. It was the inconside- 
rate laugh of Johnson, upon his mention of it, that produced that 
excellent retort on the Doctor's grandiosity of style : " If you 
were to describe little fish conversing, you would make them 
talk like great whales." 

How different from the sensations of mankind, with its delicate 
skin and apprehensive fingers, must be those of feathered and 



ohap. lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, fyc. 153 

scaled animals, of animals with hoofs and claws, and of such 
creatures as beetles and other insects, who live in coats of mail, 
have twenty feet apiece, and hundreds of eyes ! A writer who 
should make these creatures talk, would be forced, in spite of his 
imagination, to write parts of his account in a jargon, in order to 
typify what he could not express. What must be their sensa- 
tions when they awake ; when they spin webs ; when they wrap 
themselves up in the chrysalis ; when they stick for hours to- 
gether on a wall or a pane of glass, apparently stupid and insen- 
sible 1 What may not the eagle see in the sky, beyond the ca- 
pabilities of our vision ? And on the other hand, what possibili- 
ties of visible existence round about them may they not realize ; 
what creatures not cognisable by our senses. There is reason 
to believe in the existence of myriads of earthly creatures, who 
are not conscious of the presence of man. Why may not man 
be unconscious of others, even at his side ? There are minute 
insects that evidently know nothing of the human hand that is 
close to them ; and millions in water and in air that apparently 
can have no conception of us. As little may our five senses be 
capable of knowing others. But what, it may be asked, is the 
good of these speculatious ! To enlarge knowledge, and vivify 
the imagination. The universe is not made up of hosiery and 
the three per cents. ; no, nor even of the Court Guide. 

Sir Thomas Browne would not have thought it beneath him 
to ask what all those innumerable little gentry (we mean the in- 
sects) are about, between our breakfast and dinner ; how the 
time passes in the solitudes of America, or the depths of the 
Persian gulf; or what they are doing even, towards three in the 
afternoon, in the planet Mercury. Without going so far as that 
for an enlargement of our being, it will do us no harm to sym- 
pathize with as many creatures as we can. It gives us the 
privilege of the dervise, who could pitch himself into the animals 
he killed, and become a stag or a bird. We know not what 
sort of a fish Goldsmith could have made of himself. La Fon- 
taine's animals are all La Fontaine, at least in their way of talk- 
ing. As far as luxury goes, and a total absence from human 
cares, nobody has painted animal enjoyment better than the 
most luxurious of poets, Spenser, in the description of his Butter- 



154 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxiv. 

fly. La Fontaine called himself the Butterfly of Parnassus ; 
but we defy him to have produced anything like the abundance 
and continuity of the following picture, which is exuberant to a 
degree that makes our astonishment run over in laughter. It 
seems as if it would never leave off. We quote the whole of it, 
both on this account, and because we believe it to be unique of 
the kind. Ovid himself is not so long nor so fine in any one of 
his descriptions, which are also not seldom misplaced — a charge 
that does not attach here : and Marino, another exuberant genius 
of the south of Italy, is*too apt to run the faults of Ovid to seed, 
without having some of his good qualities. Spenser is describing 
a butterfly, bound upon his day's pleasure. A common observer 
sees one of these beautiful little creatures flutter across a gar- 
den, thinks how pretty and sprightly it is, and there his observa- 
tion comes to an end. Now mark what sort of report a poet can 
give in, even of the luxuries of a fly : — 

Thus the fresh Clarion, being readie dight, 

Unto his journey did himselfe addresse, 
And with good speed began to take his flight 

Over the fields, in his franke lustinesse ; 
And all the champaine o'er he soared light, 

And all the countrey wide he did possesse, 
Feeding upon their pleasures bounteouslie, 
That none gainsaid, nor none did him envie. 

r he woods, the rivers, and the medowes greene, 
With his aire-cutting wings he measured wide, 

Ve did he leave the mountaines bare unseene, 
Nor the ranke grassie fennes delights untride. 

But none of these, however sweet they beene, 
Mote please his fancie, nor him cause f abide : 

His choicefull sense with every change doth flit : 

No common things may please a wavering wit. 

To the gay gardins his unstaid desire 

Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights : 

There lavish Nature, in her best attire, 

Powres forth sweet odors and alluring sights ; 

And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire 
T'excell the naturall with made delights : 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, <^c. 155 

And all, that faire or pleasant may be found, 
In riotous excesse doth there abound. 

There he arriving, round about doth flie, 
From bed to bed, from one to t'other border : 

And takes survey, with curious busie eye, 

Of every flowre and herbe there set in order ; 

Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly, 
Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder, 

Ne with his feete their silken leaves deface, 

But pastures on the pleasures of each place. 

And evermore, with most varietie, 

And change of sweetness (for all change is sweet) 

He casts his glutton sense to satisfie, 

Now sucking of the sap of herbe most meet, 

Or of the dew, which yet on them does lie ; 
Now in the same bathing his tender feet : 

And then he percheth on some branch thereby, 

To weather him, and his moyst wings to dry. 

And then again he turneth to his play, 
To spoil the pleasures of that paradise ; 

The wholesome sage, the lavender still gray, 
Rank-smelling rue, and cummin good for ayes, 

The roses raigning in the pride of May, 
Sharp hyssop good for green wounds remedies, 

Faire marigolds, and bees-alluring thyme, 

Sweet marjoram, and daysies decking prime. 

Cool violets, and orpine growing still, 

Embathed balm, and chearful galingale, 
Fresh costmarie, and breathfull camomill, 

Dull poppy, and drink-quickening setuals, 
Veyne-healing verven, and head-purging dill, 

Sound savorie, and basil hartie-hale, 
Fat coleworts, and comforting perseline, 
Cool lettuce, and refreshing rosmarine ; 

And whatso else of vertue good or ill, 

Grew in this gardin, fetch' d from far away. 

Of every one he takes, and tastes at will, 
And on their pleasures greedily doth prey, 

Then when he hath both plaid, and fed at fill, 
In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay, 



156 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxiv. 

And there him rests in riotous suffisaunce 
Of all his gladfulness, and kingly joy aunce. 

Nothing, it might be supposed, could be said after this ; and 
yet the poet strikes up a question, in a tone like a flourish of 
trumpets, after this royal dinner : — 

" What more felicitie can fall to creature, 
Than to enjoy delight with libertie 
And to be lord of all the vjorks of JYature ? 

To reigne in the aire from th' earth to highest skie, 
To feed on flowers, and weedes of glorious feature ? 

To take whatever thing doth please the eye ? 
Who rests not pleased with such happiness, 
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness." 

Amen, thou most satisfying of poets ! But when are human be- 
ings to be as well off in that matter as the butterflies ? or how 
are you to make them content, should the time come when they 
have nothing to earn ? However, there is a vast deal to be 
learned from the poet's recommendation, before we need ask 
either of those questions. We may enjoy a great deal more in- 
nocent " delight with liberty " than we are in the habit of doing ; 
and may be lords, if not of " all the works of nature," of a great 
many green fields and reasonable holidays. It seems a mighty 
thing to call a butterfly " lord of all the works of nature. Many 
lords, who have pretensions to be butterflies, have no pretensions 
as wide as those. And, doubtless, there is a pleasant little lurk- 
ing of human pride and satire in the poet's eye, notwithstanding 
his epical impartiality, when he talks thus of the universal empire 
of his hero. And yet how inferior are the grandest inanimate 
works of nature, to the least thing that has life in it ! The oaks 
are mighty, and the hills mightier ; yet that little participation 
of the higher spirit of vitality, which gifts the butterfly with lo- 
comotion, renders him unquestionable lord of the oaks and the 
hills. He does what he pleases with them, and leaves them with 
a spurn of his foot. 

Another beauty to be noted in the above luxurious lines, is the 
fine sense with which the poet makes his butterfly fond of things 
not very pleasant to our human apprehension — such as bitter 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c. 157 

herbs, and " rank, grassy fens." And like a right great poet, 
he makes no apology for saying so much about so little a crea- 
ture. Man may be made a very little creature to a very treat 
apprehension, yet we know what a world of things he contains ; 
and all who partake of his senses are sharers of his importance. 
The passions and faculties which render us of consequence to 
one another, render the least thing that breathes of consequence 
in the eyes of the poet, who is the man that sees fair play among 
all the objects of the creation. A poetaster might be afraid to 
lower his little muse, by making her notice creatures hardly less 
than herself: the greater the poet, the more godlike his impar- 
tiality. Homer draws his similes, as Jupiter might have done, 
from some of the homeliest animals. The god made them, and 
therefore would have held them in due estimation : the poet 
(lIoir)Tr,s, the Maker) remakes them, and therefore contem- 
plates them in a like spirit. Old Kit Marlowe, who, as Dray- 
ton says — 

" Had in him those brave sublunary things 
That the first poets had," 

ventures, in some play of his, upon as true and epic a simile as 
ever was written, taken from no mightier a sphere than one of 
his parlor windows : — 

" Untameable as flies." 

Imagine the endeavor to tame aflyf It is obvious that there 
is no getting at him : he does not comprehend you : he knows 
nothing about you : it is doubtful, in spite of his large eyes, 
whether he even sees you ; at least to any purpose of recognition. 
How capriciously and provokingly he glides hither and thither ! 
What angles and diagrams he describes in his locomotion, seem- 
ingly without any purpose ! He will peg away at your sugar, 
but stop him who can when he has done with it. Thumping 
(if you could get some fairy-stick that should do it without kill- 
ing) would have no effect on a creature, who shall bump his head 
half the morning against a pane of glass, and never learn that 
there is no getting through it. Solitary imprisonment would be 



158 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxiv. 

lost on the incomprehensible little wretch who can stand still 
with as much pertinacity as he can bustle about, and will stick 
a whole day in one posture. The best thing to be said of him is, 
that he is as fond of cleaning himself as a cat, doing it much in 
the same manner ; and that he often rubs his hands together with 
an appearance of great energy and satisfaction. 

After all, Spenser's picture of the butterfly's enjoyments is not 
complete, entomologically. The luxury is perfect ; but the 
reader is not sure that it is all proper butterfly luxury, and that 
the man does not mix with it. It is not the definite, exclusive, 
and characteristic thing desiderated by Goldsmith. The butter- 
fly, perhaps, is no fonder of " bathing his feet," than we should 
be to stick in a tub of treacle. And we ought to hear more of 
his antennae and his feathers (for his wings are full of them), 
and the way in which they modify, or become affected by his 
enjoyments. 

But, on the other hand, the inability, in these sympathies with 
our fellow-creatures, to divest ourselves of an overplus of one's 
human nature, gives them a charm by the very imperfection. 
We cannot leave our nature behind us when we enter into their 
sensations. We must retain it, by the very reason of our sym- 
pathy ; and hence arises a pleasant incongruity, allied to other 
mixtures of truth and fiction. One of the animals which a 
generous and sociable man would soonest become, is a dog. A 
dog can have a friend ; he has affections and character, he can 
enjoy equally the field and the fire-side ; he dreams, he caresses, 
he propitiates ; he offends and is pardoned ; he stands by you in 
adversity ; he is a good fellow. We would sooner be a dog than 
many of his masters. And yet what lover of dogs, or con- 
temner of his own species, or most trusting reader of Ovid, could 
think with comfort of suddenly falling on all fours, and scamper- 
ing about with his nose to the ground ! Who would like to lap 
when he was thirsty ; or, as Marvell pretended his hungry poet 
did— 

" With griesly tongue to dart the passing flies ?" 

Swift might have fancied, when he wrote his Houhhynnms, that 
he could fain have been a horse ; yet he was obliged to take 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c. 159 

human virtues along with him, even to adorn his rebukers of 
humanity ; and in fancying ourself a horse after his fashion, 
who can contemplate with satisfaction the idea of trotting to an 
evening party in a paddock, inviting them to a dinner of oats, or 
rubbing one's meditative chin with a hoof ? The real horse is a 
beautiful and spirited, but we fear not a very intelligent or sensi- 
tive animal, at least not in England. The Arabian, brought up 
with his master's family, is of another breeding, and seems to 
attain to higher faculties; but in Europe the horse appears to be 
content with as few ideas as a domestic animal can well have. 
Who would like to stand winking, as he does for hours, at a 
man's door, mo vino; neither to the right nor the left ? There is 
some companionship in a coach-horse ; and old " Indicator"' 
readers know the respect we entertain on that account for the 
veriest hacks : but it would be no stretch of ambition in the 
greatest lover of animals to prefer being a horse to any other. 
One of its pleasantest occupations would be carrying a lady ; 
but then, pleasant as it would be to us, humanly, we should be 
dull to it, inasmuch as we were a horse. A monkey is too like 
a man in some things to be endurable as an identification with us. 
We shudder at the humiliation of the affinity. A monkey, in his 
feather and red jacket, as he is carried about the streets, eager- 
faced yet indifferent — looks like a melancholy, little, withered 
old man, cut down to that miniature size by some freak of the 
supernatural. What say you, reader, to being a hog ? Horri- 
ble ! You could not think of it : — you are too great a lover of 
the graces and the green fields. True : — yet there are not a 
few respectable, perhaps even reverend personages, who, to 
judge from their tastes in ordinary, would have no such horror. 
Next to eating pork, they may surely think there would be a 
pleasure in pork, eating. Sheep, goats, cattle of all sorts, have 
their repulsive aspect in this question. Among all our four- 
footed acquaintances, the deer seem to carry it, next the dog ; 
their shapes are so elegant, and places of resort so poetical : yet, 
like cattle, their lives seem but dull ; and there is the huntsman, 
who is the devil. Fancy the being compelled to scamper away 
from Tomkins, one of the greatest fools in existence, at the rate 



160 THE INDICATOR. [chap. lxiv. 

of twenty miles an hour, with the tears running down your face, 
and your heart bursting ! 

No, dear and grave, and at the same time most sprightly and 
miscellaneous reader, one would rather be a bird than a beast.* 
Birds neither offend us by any revolting similarity, nor repel us 
by a dissimilarity that is frightful ; their songs, their nests, 
their courtship, their vivacity, give them a strong moral likeness 
to some of our most pleasing characteristics ; and they have an 
advantage over us, which forms one of the desires of our most 
poetical dreams — they fly. To be sure, in spite of what is said 
of doves (who, by the way, are horribly jealous, and beat one 
another), beaks and kissing do not go so well together as lips ; 
neither would it be very agreeable to one's human head to be 
eternally jerking on this side and that, as if on guard against an 
enemy ; but this, we suppose, only takes place out of the nest, 
and in the neighborhood of known adversaries. The songs, the 
wings, the flight, the rising of the lark, the luxurious wakeful- 
ness of the nightingale, the beauty of a bird's movements, his 
infantine quickness of life, are all charming to the imagination. 
" O that I had the wings of a dove !" said the royal poet in his 
affliction ; " then would I fly away, and be at rest I" He did not 
think only of the " wings " of the dove ; he thought of its nest, 
its peacefulness, its solitude, its white freedom from the soil of 
care and cities, and wished to be the dove itself. 

It has been thought, however, that of all animated creation, 
the bees present the greatest moral likeness to man ; not only 
because they labor, and lay up stores, and live in communities, 
but because they have a form of government and a monarchy. 
Virgil immortalised them after a human fashion. A writer in 
the time of Elizabeth, probably out of compliment to the Virgin 
Queen, rendered them dramatis personce, and gave them a whole 
play to themselves. Above all, they have been held up to us, 
not only as a likeness, but as " a great moral lesson ;" and this, 
not merely with regard to the duties of occupation, but the form 
of their polity. A monarchical government, it is said, is natural 
to man, because it is an instinct of nature : the very bees have it. 

* Since writing this, I have a doubt in favor of the squirrel. 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c. 161 

It may be worth while to inquire a moment into the value of 
this argument ; not as affecting the right and title of our Sove- 
reign Lord King William the Fourth (whom, with the greatest 
sincerity, we hope God will preserve !), but for its own sake, as 
well as for certain little collateral deductions. And, in the first 
place, we cannot but remark, how unfairly the animal creation 
are treated, with reference to the purposes of moral example. 
We degrade or exalt them, as it suits the lesson we desire to 
inculcate. If we rebuke a drunkard or a sensualist, we think 
we can say nothing severer to him than to recommend him not 
to make a " beast of himself;" which is very unfair towards the 
beasts, who are no drunkards, and behave themselves as Nature 
intended. A horse has no habit of drinking ; he does not get a 
red face with it. The stag does not go reeling home to his wives. 
On the other hand, we are desired to be as faithful as a dog, as 
bold as a lion, as tender as a dove ; as if the qualities denoted by 
these epithets were not to be found among ourselves. But above 
all, the bee is the argument. Is not the honey-bee, we are 
asked, a wise animal ? — We grant it.— " Doth he not improve 
each passing hour 1" — He is pretty busy, it must be owned — as 
much occupied at eleven, twelve, and one o'clock, as if his life 
depended on it. — Does he not lay up stores ? — He does. — Is he 
not social ? — Does he not live in communities ? — There can be 
doubt of it. — Well, then, he has a monarchical government ; and 
does not that clearly show that a monarchy is the instinct of 
nature ? Does it not prove, by an unerring rule, that the only 
form of government in request among the obeyers of instinct, is 
the only one naturally fitted for man 1 

In answering the spirit of this question, we shall not stop to 
inquire how far it is right as to the letter, or how many different 
forms of polity are to be found among other animals, such as the 
crows, the beavers, the monkeys ; neither shall we examine how 
far instinct is superior to reason, or why the example of man 
himself is to go for nothing. We will take for granted, that the 
bee is the wisest animal of all, and that it is a judicious thing 
to consider his manners and customs > with reference to their 
adoption by his inferiors, who keep him in hives. This naturally 
lead us to inquire, whether we could not frame all our systems 
12 



162 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiv 

of life after the same fashion. We are busy, like the bee ; we 
are gregarious, like him ; we make provision against a rainy 
day ; we are fond of flowers and the country ; we occasionally 
sting, like him ; and we make a great noise about what we do. 
Now, if we resemble the bee in so many points, and his political 
instinct is so admirable, let us reflect what we ought to become 
in other respects, in order to attain to the full benefit of his 
example. 

In the first place, having chosen our monarch (who, by the 
way, in order to complete the likeness, ought always to be a 
queen — which is a thing to which the Tories will have no objec- 
tion), we must abolish our House of Lords and Commons ; for 
the bees have unquestionably no such institutions. This would 
be a little awkward for many of the stoutest advocates of the 
monarchical principle, who, to say the truth, often behave as if 
they would much rather abolish the monarch than themselves. 
But so it must be ; and the worst of it is, that although the 
House of Commons would have to be abolished, as well as the 
House of Lords, the Commons or Commonalty are nevertheless 
the only persons besides the sovereign who would exercise 
power ; and these Commons would be the working classes ! 

We shall show this more particularly, and by some very 
curious examples, in a moment. Meantime we must dispose of 
the Aristocracy ; for though there is no House of Lords in a bee- 
hive, there is a considerable Aristocracy, and a very odd body 
they are. We doubt whether the Dukes of Newcastle and 
Buccleugh would like to change places with them. There is, it 
is true, no little resemblance between the Aristocracy of the hive 
and that of human communities. They are called Drones, and 
appear to have nothing to do but to feed and sleep. 

We have just been doubting whether the celebrated phrases, 
fruges consumere nati, born to consume the fruits of the earth, 
is in JuvenaVs Satires or VirgiVs Georgics, so like in this re- 
spect are the aristocracy of the bee-hive and certain consumer, 
of tithes and taxes. At all events they are a body who live on 
the labor of others. 

" Armento ignavo, e che non vuol fadca." 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c. 163 

But the likeness has been too often remarked to need dwelling 
upon. Not so two little exceptions to the likeness; namely the 
occasional selection of a patriarch from their body ; and the 
massacre of every man John of them once a year ! Yet of 
these we must not lose sight, if we are to take example of bee- 
policy. A lover, then, or ex-qfficio husband, is occasionally taken 
out of their number, and becomes Prince of Denmark to the 
Queen Anne of the hive, but only for an incredibly short period, 
and for the sole purpose of keeping alive the nation ; for her 
Majesty is a princess of a very virtuous turn of mind, a pure 
Utilitarian, though on a throne • and apparently has the greatest 
indifference, if not contempt, afterwards, and at all other times, 
for this singular court-officer and his peers. Xay, there is not 
only reason to believe, that like the fine lady in Congreve, 

"She stares upon the strange man's face 
Like one she ne'er had known," 

but some are of opinion, that the poor lord never recovers it ! 
He dies at the end of a few days, out of sheer insignificance, 
though perhaps the father of no less than twelve thousand child- 
ren in the space of two months ! It is not safe for him to have 
known such exaltation, as was sometimes the case with the 
lovers of goddesses. How the aristocracy in general feel, on 
occasion of their brother's death, we have no means of judging ; 
but we fancy them not a little alarmed, and desirous of waiving 
the perilous honor. And yet they appear to exist and to be nu 
merous, solely in order to eat and drink, and furnish this rare 
quota of utility ; for which the community are so little grateful, 
that once a year they hunt the whole body to death, and kill 
them with their stings. Drones, be it observed, have no stings ; 
they do not carry swords, as the gentry once did in Europe, 
when it was a mark of their rank. Those, strange to tell ! are 
the ornaments of the beeworking-classes. It is thought, in 
Hivedom, that they only are entitled to have weapons, who 
create property. 

But we have not yet got half through the wonders which are 
to modify human conduct by the example of this wise, indus- 



164 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiv 

trious, and monarchy-loving people. Marvellous changes must 
be effected, before we have any general pretension to resemble 
them, always excepting in the aristocratic particular. For 
instance, the aristocrats of the hive, however unmasculine in 
their ordinary mode of life, are the only males. The working, 
classes, like the sovereign, are all females ! How are we to 
manage this ? We must convert, by one sudden metamorphosis, 
the whole body of our agricultural and manufacturing popula- 
tion into women ! Mrs. Cobbett must displace her husband, and 
tell us all about Indian corn. There must be not a man in Not- 
tingham, except the Duke of Newcastle ; and he trembling, 
lest the Queen should send for him. The tailors, bakers, 
carpenters, gardeners, &c, must all be Mrs. Tailors and 
Mrs. Bakers. The very name of John Smith must go out. 
The directory must be Amazonian. This Commonalty of 
women must also be, at one and the same time, the operatives, 
the soldiers, the virgins, and the legislators of the country ! 
They must make all we want, fight all our enemies, and even 
get up a Queen for us, when necessary ; for the sovereigns of 
the hive are often of singular origin, being manufactured ! liter- 
ally " made to order," and that, too, by dint of their eating ! 
They are fed and stuffed into royalty ! The receipt is, to take 
any ordinary female bee in its infancy, put it into a royal 
cradle or cell, and feed it with a certain kind of jelly ; upon 
which its shape alters into that of sovereignty, and her Majesty 
issues forth, royal by the grace of stomach. This is no fable, 
as the reader may see on consulting any good history of bees. 
In general, several Queen-bees are made at a time, in case of 
accidents ; but each, on emerging from her department, seeks 
to destroy the other, and one only remains living in one hive. 
The others depart at the head of colonies like Dido. 

To sum up, then, the condition of human society, were it to 
be remodelled after the example of the bee, let us conclude 
with drawing a picture of the state of our beloved country, so 
modified. Imprimis, all our working people would be females, 
wearing swords, never marrying, and occasionally making 



chap, lxiv.] BEES, BUTTERFLIES, &c. 165 

queens. They would grapple with their work in a prodigious 
manner, and make a great noise. 

Secondly, our aristocracy would be all males, never working, 
never marrying (except when sent for), always eating or sleep- 
ing, and annually having their throats cut. The bee massacre 
takes place in July, when accordingly all our nobility and 
gentry would be out of town, with a vengeance ! The women 
would draw their swords, and hunt and stab them all about the 
west end, till Brompton and Bayswater would be choked with 
slain. 

Thirdly, her Majesty the Queen would either succeed to a 
quiet throne, or, if manufactured, would have to eat a prodi- 
gious quantity of jelly in her infancy : and so after growing 
into proper sovereign condition, would issue forth, and begin her 
reign either with killing her royal sisters, or leading forth a 
colony to America or New South Wales. She would then take 
to husband some noble lord for the space of one calendar hour, 
and dismissing him to his dulness, proceed to lie in of 12,000 
little royal highnesses in the course of the eight following 
weeks, with others too numerous to mention ; all which princely 
generation, with little exception, would forthwith give up their 
title, and divide themselves into lords or working- women, as it 
happened ; and so the story would go round to the end of the 
chapter, bustling, working, and massacreing. And here ends 
the sage example of the Monarchy of the Bees. 

We must observe, nevertheless, before we conclude, that how- 
ever ill and tragical the example of the bees may look for human 
imitation, we are not to suppose that the fact is anything like so 
melancholy to themselves. Perhaps it is no evil at all, or only 
so for the moment. The drones, it is true, seem to have no 
fancy for being massacred ; but we have no reason to suppose 
that they, or any of the rest concerned in this extraordinary 
instinct, are aware of the matter beforehand ; and the same is 
to be said of the combats between the Queen Bees — they seem 
to be the result of an irresistible impulse, brought about by the 
sudden pressure of a necessity. Bees appear to be very happy 
during far the greater nortion of their existence. A modern 



166 THE INDICATOR. [chap, lxiv 

writer, of whom it is to be lamented that a certain want of re- 
finement stopped short his perceptions, and degraded his philoso- 
phy from the finally expedient into what was fugitively so, has 
a passage on this point, as agreeable as what he is speaking of. 
" A bee among the flowers in spring," says Dr. Paley, " is one 
of the cheerfullest objects that can be looked upon. Its life ap- 
pears to be all enjoyment, so busy and so pleased." 



THE COMPANION. 



THE COMPANION. 



6 The first quality in a Companion is Truth." 

Sir W. Temple. 



CHAPTER I. 

An Earth upon Heaven. 

Somebody, a little while ago, wrote an excellent article in the 
New Monthly Magazine on " Persons one would wish to have 
known." He should write another on "Persons one could wish 
to have dined with." There is Rabelais, and Horace, and the 
Mermaid roysters, and Charles Cotton, and Andrew Marvell, 
and Sir Richard Steele, cum multis aliis : and for the colloquial, 
if not the festive part, Swift and Pope, and Dr. Johnson, and 
Burke, and Home Tooke. What a pity one cannot dine with 
them all round ! People are accused of having earthly notions 
of heaven. As it is difficult to have any other, we may be par- 
doned for thinking that we could spend a very pretty thousand 
years in dining and getting acquainted with all the good fellows 
on record ; and having got used to them, we think we could 
go very well on, and be content to wait some other thousands 
for a higher beatitude. Oh, to wear out one of the celestial 
lives of a triple century's duration, and exquisitely to grow old, 
in reciprocating dinners and teas with the immortals of old books! 



170 THE COMPANION. [chap. i. 

Will Fielding "leave his card 55 in the next world? Will 
Berkeley (an angel in a wig and lawn sleeves!) come to ask how 
Utopia gets on ? Will Shakspeare (for the greater the man, the 
more the good-nature might be expected) know by intuition 
that one of his readers (knocked up with bliss) is dying to see 
him at the Angel and Turk's Head, and come lounging with his 
hands in his doublet-pockets accordingly ? 

It is a pity that none of the great geniuses, to whose lot it has 
fallen to describe a future state, has given us his own notions of 
heaven. Their accounts are all modified by the national theo- 
logy; whereas the Apostle himself has told us, that we can 
have no conception of the blessings intended for us. "Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard," &c. After this, Dante's shining lights 
are poor. Milton's heaven, with the armed youth exercising 
themselves in military games, is worse. His best Paradise was 
on earth, and a very pretty heaven he made of it. For our 
parts, admitting and venerating as we do the notion of a heaven 
surpassing all human conception, we trust that it is no presump- 
tion to hope, that the state mentioned by the Apostle is the final 
heaven ; and that we may ascend and gradually accustom our- 
selves to the intensity of it, by others of a less superhuman nature. 
Familiar as we are both with joy and sorrow, and accustomed 
to surprises and strange sights of imagination, it is difficult to 
fancy even the delight of suddenly emerging into a new and 
boundless state of existence, where everything is marvellous, 
and opposed to our experience. We could wish to take gently 
to it; to be loosed not entirely at once. Our song desires to be 
"a song of degrees." Earth and its capabilities — are these 
nothing ? And are they to come to nothing ? Is there no beau- 
tiful realization of the fleeting type that is shown us ? No body 
to this shadow ? No quenching to this taught and continued 
thirst ? No arrival at these natural homes and resting-places, 
which are so heavenly to our imaginations, even though they be 
built of clay, and are situate in the fields of our infancy ? We 
are becoming graver than we intended ; but to return to our 
proper style : — nothing shall persuade us, for the present, that 
Paradise Mount, in any pretty village in England, has not 
another Paradise Mount to correspond, in some less perishing 



chap, i.] AN EARTH UPON HEAVEN. 171 

region ; that is to say, provided anybody has set his heart upon 
it : — and that we shall not all be dining, and drinking tea, and 
complaining of the weather (we mean, for its not being perfectly 
blissful) three hundred years hence, in some snug interlunar 
spot, or perhaps in the moon itself, seeing that it is our next 
visible neighbor, and shrewdly suspected of being hill and dale. 

It appears to us, that for a certain term of centuries, Heaven 
must consist of something of this kind. In a word, we cannot 
but persuade ourselves, that to realize everything that we have 
justly desired on earth, will be heaven ; — we mean, for that 
period : and that afterwards, if we behave ourselves in a 
proper pre-angelical manner, we shall go to another heaven, 
still better, where we shall realize all that we desired in our first. 
Of this latter we can as yet have no conception ; but of the 
former, we think some of the items may be as follows : — 

Imprimis, — (not because friendship comes before love in point 
of degree, but because it precedes it, in point of time, as at 
school we have a male companion before we are old enough to 
have a female) — Imprimis then, a friend. He will have the 
same tastes and inclinations as ourselves, with just enough dif- 
ference to furnish argument without sharpness ; and he will be 
generous, just, entertaining, and no shirker of his nectar. In 
short, he will be the best friend we have had upon earth. We 
shall talk together "of afternoons; 55 and when the Earth begins 
to rise (a great big moon, looking as happy as we know its 
inhabitants will be), other friends will join us, not so emphati- 
cally our friends as he, but excellent fellows all ; and we shall 
read the poets, and have some sphere-music (if we please), or 
renew one of our old earthly evenings, picked out of a dozen 
Christmases. 

Item, a mistress. In heaven (not to speak it profanely) we 
know, upon the best authority, that people are "neither married 
nor given in marriage ; 55 so that there is nothing illegal in the 
term. (By the way, there can be no clergymen there, if there 
are no official duties for them. We do not say, there will be 
nobody who has been a clergyman. Berkeley would refute that ; 
and a hundred Welsh curates. But they would be no longer in 
orders. They would refuse to call themselves more Reverend 





172 THE COMPANION. [chap. i. 

than their neighbors.) Item then, a mistress; beautiful, of 
course, — an angelical expression, — a Peri, or Houri, or what- 
ever shape of perfection you choose to imagine her, and yet re- 
taining the likeness of the woman you loved best on earth ; in 
fact, she herself, but completed; all her good qualities made 
perfect, and her defects taken away (with the exception of one 
or two charming little angelical peccadilloes, which she can 
only get rid of in a post-future state) ; good-tempered, laughing, 
serious, fond of everything about her without detriment to her 
special fondness for yourself, a great roamer in Elysian fields 
and forests, but not alone (they go in pairs there, as the jays and 
turtle-doves do with us) ; but above all things, true ; oh, so true, 
that you take her word as you would a diamond, nothing being 
more transparent, or solid, or precious. Between writing some 
divine poem, and meeting our friends of an evening, we should 
walk with her, or fly (for we should have wings, of course) like 
a couple of human bees or doves, extracting delight from every 
flower, and with delight filling every shade. There is some- 
thing too good in this to dwell upon ; so we spare the fears and 
hopes of the prudish. We would lay her head upon our heart, 
and look more pleasure into her eyes, than the prudish or the 
profligate ever so much as fancied. 

Ite?n, books. Shakspeare and Spenser should write us new 
ones ! Think of that. We would have another Decameron : 
and Walter Scott (for he will be there too ; — we mean to beg 
Hume to introduce us) shall write us forty more novels, all as 
good as the Scotch ones ; and Radical as well as Tory shall 
love him. It is true, we speak professionally, when we mention 
books. 

We think, admitted to that equal sky, 
The Arabian Nights must bear us company. 

When Gainsborough died, he expired in a painter's enthusiasm, 
saying, " We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the 
party." — He had a proper foretaste. Virgil had the same light, 
when he represented the old heroes enjoying in Elysium their 
favorite earthly pursuits ; only one cannot help thinking, with 



chap, i.] AN EARTH UPON HEAVEN. 173 

the natural modesty of reformers, that the taste in this our inter- 
lunar heaven will be benefited from time to time by the know- 
ledge of new-comers. We cannot well fancy a celestial ancient 
Briton delighting himself with painting his skin, or a Chinese 
angel hobbling a mile up the Milky Way in order to show her- 
self to advantage. 

For breakfast, we must have a tea beyond anything Chinese. 
Slaves will certainly not make the sugar; but there will be cows 
for the milk. One's landscapes cannot do without cows. 

For horses we shall ride a Pegasus, or Ariosto's Hippogriff, 
or Sinbad's Roc. We mean, for our parts, to ride them all, 
having a passion for fabulous animals. Fable will be no fable 
then. We shall have just as much of it as we like ; and the 
Utilitarians will be astonished to find how much of that sort of 
thing will be in request. They will look very odd, by the 
bye, — those gentlemen, when they first arrive ; but will soon 
get used to the delight, and find there was more of it in their 
own doctrine than they imagined. 

The weather will be extremely fine, but not without such 
varieties as shall hinder it from being tiresome. April will dress 
the whole country in diamonds ; and there will be enough cold 
in the winter to make a fire pleasant of an evening. The fire 
will be make of sweet-smelling turf and sunbeams ; but it will 
have a look of coal. If we choose, now and then we shall even 
have inconveniences. 



174 THE COMPANION. [chap. ii. 



CHAPTER II. 

Bad Weather. 

After longing these two months for some " real winter wea- 
ther," the public have had a good sharp specimen, a little too 
real. We mean to take our revenge by writing an article upon 
it after a good breakfast, with our feet at a good fire, and in a 
room quiet enough to let us hear the fire as well as feel it. Out- 
side the casement (for we are writing this in a cottage) the east- 
wind is heard, cutting away like a knife ; snow is on the ground; 
there is frost and sleet at once ; and the melancholy crow of 
poor chanticleer at a distance seems complaining that nobody 
will cherish him. One imagines that his toes must be cold ; 
and that he is drawing comparisons between the present feeling 
of his sides, and the warmth they enjoy next his plump wife on 
a perch. 

But in the country there is always something to enjoy. There 
is the silence, if nothing else ; you feel that the air is healthy ; 
and you can see to write. Think of a street in London, at 
once narrow, foggy, and noisy ; the snow thawing, not because 
the frost has not returned, but because the union of mud and 
smoke prevails against it ; and then the unnatural cold sound 
of the clank of milk-pails (if you are up early enough); or if 
you are not, the chill, damp, strawy, rickety hackney-coaches 
going by, with fellows inside of them with cold feet, and the 
coachman a mere bundle of rags, blue nose, and jolting. (He'll 
quarrel with every fare, and the passenger knows it, and will 
resist. So they will stand with their feet in the mud, haggling. 
The old gentleman saw an extra charge of a shilling in his 
face.) To complete the misery, the pedestrians kick, as they 
go, those detestable flakes of united snow and mud ; — at least 
they ought to do so, to complete our picture ; and at night-time, 



chap, ii.] BAD WEATHER 175 

people coming home hardly know whether or not they have 
chins. 

But is there no comfort then in a London street in such wea- 
ther ? Infinite, if people will but have it, and families are 
good-tempered. We trust we shall be read by hundreds of such 
this morning. Of some we are certain ; and do hereby, agree- 
ably to our ubiquitous privileges, take several breakfasts at 
once. How pleasant is this rug ! How bright and generous 
the fire ! How charming the fair makers of the tea ! And how 
happy that they have not to make it themselves, the drinkers of 
it ! Even the hackney-coachman means to get double as much 
as usual to-day, either by cheating or being pathetic : and the 
old gentleman is resolved to make amends for the necessity of 
his morning drive, by another pint of wine at dinner, and crum- 
pets with his tea. It is not by grumbling against the elements that 
evil is to be done away ; but by keeping one's-self in good heart 
with one's fellow-creatures, and remembering that they are all 
capable of partaking our pleasures. The contemplation of pain, 
acting upon a splenetic temperament, produces a stirring re- 
former here and there, who does good rather out of spite against 
wrong, than sympathy with pleasure, and becomes a sort of dis- 
agreeable angel. Far be it from us, in the present state of so- 
ciety, to wish that no such existed ! But they will pardon us 
for laboring in the vocation to which a livelier nature calls us, 
and drawing a distinction between the dissatisfaction that ends 
in good, and the mere common-place grumbling that in a thou- 
sand instances to one ends in nothing but plaguing everybody 
as well as the grumbler. In almost all cases, those who are in 
a state of pain themselves, are in the fairest way for giving it ; 
whereas, pleasure is in its nature social. The very abuses of 
it (terrible as they sometimes are) cannot do as much harm as 
the violations of the common sense of good-humor ; simply be- 
cause it is its nature to go with, and not counter to humanity. 
The only point to take care of is, that as many innocent sources 
of pleasure are kept open as possible, and affection and imagina- 
tion brought in to show us what they are, and how surely all may 
partake of them. We are not likely to forget that a human 
being is of importance, when we can discern the merits of so 



176 THE COMPANION. [chap, n 

small a thing as a leaf, or a honey-bee, or the beauty of a flake 
of snow, or the fanciful scenery made by the glowing coals in 
a fire-place. Professors of sciences may do this. Writers the 
most enthusiastic in a good cause, may sometimes lose sight of 
their duties, by reason of the very absorption in their enthusiasm. 
Imagination itself cannot always be abroad and at home at the 
same time. But the many are not likely to think too deeply of 
anything ; and the more pleasures that are taught them by dint 
of an agreeable exercise of their reflection, the more they will 
learn to reflect on all around them, and to endeavor that their re- 
flections may have a right to be agreeable. Any increase of 
the sum of our enjoyments almost invariably produces a wish 
to communicate them. An over-indulged human being is ruined 
by being taught to think of nobody but himself; but a human 
being, at once gratified and made to think of others, learns to 
add to his very pleasures in the act of diminishing them. 

But how, it may be said, are we to enjoy ourselves with re- 
flection, when our very reflection will teach us the quantity of 
suffering that exists ! How are we to be happy with breakfast- 
ing and warming our hands, when so many of our fellow-crea- 
tures are, at that instant, cold and hungry? — It is no paradox to 
answer, that the fact of our remembering them gives us a right 
to forget them : — we mean, that " there is a time for all things," 
and that having done our duty at other times in sympathizing 
with pain, we have not only a right, but it becomes our duty, to 
show the happy privileges of virtue by sympathizing with plea- 
sure. The best person in a holiday-making party is bound to 
have the loveliest face ; or if not that, a face too happy even to 
be lively. Suppose, in order to complete the beauty of it, that 
the face is a lady's. She is bound, if any uneasy reflection 
crosses her mind, to say to herself, " To this happiness I have 
contributed ; — pain I have helped to diminish ; I am sincere, 
and wish well to everybody ; and I think everybody would be 
as good as I am, perhaps better, if society were wise. Now 
society, I trust, is getting wiser ; perhaps will beat all our wis- 
dom a hundred years hence ; and meanwhile, I must not show 
that goodness is of no use, but let it realize all it can, and be 
as merry as the youngest." So saying, she gives her hand to 



chap, ii,] BAD WEATHER. 177 

a friend for a new dance, and really forgets what she has been 
thinking of, in the blithe spinning of her blood. A good-hearted 
woman, in the rosy beauty of her joy, is the loveliest object 

in . But everybody knows that. 

Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, has rebuked 
Thomson for his famous apostrophe in Winter to the " gay, li- 
centious proud ;" where he says, that amidst their dances and 
festivities they little think of the misery that is going on in the 
world : — because, observes the philosopher, upon this principle 
there never could be any enjoyment in the world, unless every 
corner of it were happy ; which would be preposterous. We 
need not say how entirely we agree with the philosopher in the 
abstract ; and certainly the poet would deserve the rebuke, had 
he addressed himself only to the "gay;" but then his gay are 
also "licentious," and not only licentious but "proud." Now 
we confess we would not be too squeamish even about the 
thoughtlessness of these gentry, for is not their very thought- 
lessness their excuse ? And are they not brought up in it, just 
as a boy in St. Giles's is brought up in thievery, or a girl to 
callousness and prostitution ? It is not the thoughtless in high 
life from whom we are to expect any good, lecture them as we 
may : and observe — Thomson himself does not say how cruel 
they are ; or what a set of rascals to dance and be merry in 
spite of their better knowledge. He says, 

"Ah, little think the gay, licentious proud" — 

and so they do. And so they will, till the diffusion of thought, 
among all classes, flows, of necessity, into their gay rooms and 
startled elevations ; and forces them to look out upon the world, 
that they may not be lost by being under the level. 

We had intended a very merry paper this week, to bespeak 
the favor of our new readers : — 

" A very merry, dancing, drinking, 
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking " paper, — 

as Dry den has it. But the Christmas holidays are past ; and it 

13 



178 THE COMPANION. [chap. ii. 

is their termination, we suppose, that has made us serious. Sit- 
ting up at night also is a great inducer of your moral remark ; 
and if we are not so pleasant as we intended to be, it is be- 
cause some friends of ours, the other night, were the pleasantest 
people in the world till five in the morning. 



chap, m.] FINE DAYS IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY. 179 



CHAPTER III. 

Fine days in January and February. 

We speak of those days, unexpected, sunshiny, cheerful, even 
vernal, which come towards the end of January, and are too apt 
to come alone. They are often set in the midst of a series of rainy 
ones, like a patch of blue in the sky. Fine weather is much at 
any time, after or before the end of the year ; but, in the latter 
case, the days are still winter days ; whereas, in the former, the 
year being turned, and March and April before us, we seem to 
feel the coming of spring. In the streets and squares, the ladies 
are abroad, with their colors and glowing cheeks. If you can 
hear anything but noise, you hear the sparrows. People antici- 
pate at breakfast the pleasure they shall have in " getting out." 
The solitary poplar in a corner looks green against the sky ; and 
the brick wall has a warmth in it. Then in the noisier streets, 
what a multitude and a new life ! What horseback ! What 
promenading ! W T hat shopping, and giving good day ! Bonnets 
encounter bonnets : — all the Miss Williamses meet all the Miss 
Joneses ; and everybody wonders, particularly at nothing. The 
shop-windows, putting forward their best, may be said to be in 
blossom. The yellow carriages flash in the sunshine ; footmen 
rejoice in their white calves, not dabbed, as usual, with rain ; 
the gossips look out of their three-pair-of-stairs windows ; other 
windows are thrown open ; fruiterers' shops look well, swelling 
with full baskets ; pavements are found to be dry ; lap-dogs 
frisk under their asthmas ; and old gentlemen issue forth, peer- 
ing up at the region of the north-east. 

Then in the country, how emerald the green, how open-looking 
the prospect ! Honeysuckles (a name alone with a garden in 
it) are detected in blossom : the hazel follows ; the snowdrop 
hangs its white perfection, exquisite with green ; we fancy the 
trees are already thicker • voices of winter birds are taken for 



180 THE COMPANION. [chap. in. 

new ones ; and in February new ones come — the thrush, the 
chaffinch, and the wood-lark. Then rooks begin to pair ; and 
the wagtail dances in the lane. As we write this article, the 
sun is on our paper, and chanticleer (the same, we trust, that 
we heard the other day) seems to crow in a very different style, 
lord of the ascendant, and as willing to be with his wives abroad 
as at home. We think we see him, as in Chaucer's homestead : 

He looketh, as it were, a grim leoun ; 
And on his toes he roameth up and down ; 
Him deigneth not to set his foot to ground ; 
He clucketh when he hath a corn yfound, 
And to him runnen then his wives all. 

Will the reader have the rest of the picture, as Chaucer gave 
it ? It is as bright and strong as the day itself, and as suited 
to it as a falcon to a knight's fist. Hear how the old poet throws 
forth his strenuous music ; as fine, considered as mere music 
and versification, as the description is pleasant and noble. 

His comb was redder than the fine cor all, 
Embattled as it were a castle wall ; 
His bill was black, and as the jet it shone ; 
Like azure was his legges and his tone ; 
His nailes whiter than the lily flower, 
And like the burned gold was his colour. 

Hardly one pause like the other throughout, and yet all flow- 
ing and sweet. The pause on the third syllable in the last line 
but one, and that on the sixth in the last, together with the deep 
variety of vowels, make a beautiful concluding couplet ; and 
indeed the whole is a study for versification. So little were 
those old poets unaware of their task, as some are apt to suppose 
them ; and so little have others dreamt, that they surpassed 
them in their own pretensions. The accent, it is to be observed, 
in those concluding words, as coral and color, is to be thrown 
on the last syllable, as it is in Italian. Color, colore, and Chau- 
cer's old Anglo-Gallican word, is a much nobler one than our 
modern one color. We have injured many such words, by 
throwing back the accent. 



chap. in.] FINE DAYS IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY. JSI 

We should beg pardon for this digression, if it had not been 
part of our understood agreement with the reader to be as de- 
sultory as we please and as befits Companions. Our very en- 
joyment of the day we are describing would not let us be other- 
wise. It is also an old fancy of ours to associate the ideas of 
Chaucer with that of any early and vigorous manifestation of 
light and pleasure. He is not only the " morning-star " of our 
poetry, as Denham called him, but the morning itself, and a 
good bit of the noon ; and we could as soon help quoting him 
at the beginning of the year, as we could help wishing to hear 
the cry of primroses, and thinking of the sweet faces that buy 
thera. 



182 THE COMPANION. [chap. iv. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Walks home by night in bad weather. Watchmen. 

The readers of these our lucubrations need not be informed 
that we keep no carriage. The consequence is, that being vi- 
sitors of the theatre, and having some inconsiderate friends who 
grow pleasanter and pleasanter till one in the morning, we are 
great walkers home by night ; and this has made us great ac- 
quaintances of watchmen, moon-light, mud-light, and other ac- 
companiments of that interesting hour. Luckily we are fond 
of a walk by night. It does not always do us good; but that 
is not the fault of the hour, but our own, who ought to be 
stouter ; and therefore we extract what good we can out of our 
necessity, with becoming temper. It is a remarkable thing in 
nature, and one of the good-naturedest things we know of her, 
that the mere fact of looking about ns, and being conscious of 
what is going on, is its own reward, if we do but notice it in 
good-humor. Nature is a great painter (and art and society 
are among her works), to whose minutest touches the mere fact 
of becoming alive is to enrich the stock of our enjoyments. 

We confess there are points liable to cavil in a walk home 
by night in February. Old umbrellas have their weak sides ; 
and the quantity of mud and rain may surmount the picturesque. 
Mistaking a soft piece of mud for hard, and so filling your shoe 
with it, especially at setting out, must be acknowledged to be 
"aggravating." But then you ought to have boots. There 
are sights, indeed, in the streets of London, which can be ren- 
dered pleasant by no philosophy ; things too grave to be talked 
about in our present paper ; but we must premise, that our walk 
leads us out of town, and through streets and suburbs of by no 
means the worst description. Even there we may be grieved 
if we will. The farther the walk into the country, the more 



chap, iv.] WALKS HOME BY NIGHT. 183 

tiresome we may choose to find it ; and when we take it purely 
to oblige others, we must allow, as in the case of a friend of 
ours, that generosity itself on two sick legs may find limits to 
the notion of virtue being its own reward, and reasonably " curse 
those comfortable people " who, by the lights in their windows, 
are getting into their warm beds, and saying to one another, 
" Bad thing to be out of doors to-night." 

Supposing, then, that we are in a reasonable state of health 
and comfort in other respects, we say that a walk home at night 
has its merits, if you choose to meet with them. The worst 
part of it is the setting out ; the closing of the door upon the 
kind faces that part with you. But their words and looks, on 
the other hand, may set you well off. We have known a word 
last us all the way home, and a look make a dream of it. To 
a lover for instance no walk can be bad. He sees but one face 
in the rain and darkness ; the same that he saw by the light in 
the warm room. This ever accompanies him, looking in his 
eyes ; and if the most pitiable and spoilt face in the world should 
come between them, startling him with the saddest mockery of 
love, he would treat it kindly for her sake. But this is a beg- 
ging of the question. A lover does not walk. He is sensible 
neither to the pleasures nor pains of walking. He treads on 
air ; and in the thick of all that seems inclement, has an avenue 
of light and velvet spread for him, like a sovereign prince. 

To resume, then, like men of this world. The advantage of 
a late hour is, that everything is silent and the people fast in 
their beds. This gives the whole world a tranquil appearance. 
Inanimate objects are no calmer than passions and cares now 
seem to be, all laid asleep. The human being is motionless as 
the house or tree ; sorrow is suspended ; and you endeavor to 
think that love only is awake. Let not readers of true deli- 
cacy be alarmed, for we mean to touch profanely upon nothing 
that ought to be sacred ; and as we are for thinking the best on 
these occasions, it is of the best love we think ; love of no heart- 
less order, and such only as ought to be awake with the stars. 

As to cares and curtain-lectures, and such-like abuses of the 
tranquillity of night, we call to mind, for their sakes, all the say- 
ings of the poets and others about " balmy sleep," and the 



184 THE COMPANION. [chap. iv. 

soothing of hurt minds, and the weariness of sorrow, which 
drops into forgetfulness. The great majority are certainly 
" fast as a church " by the time we speak of; and for the rest, 
we are among the workers who have been sleepless for their 
advantage ; so we take out our license to forget them for the 
time being. The only thing that shall remind us of them is 
the red lamp, shining afar over the apothecary's door ; which, 
while it does so, reminds us also that there is help for them to 
be had. I see him now, the pale blinker suppressing the con- 
scious injustice of his anger at being roused by the apprentice, 
and fumbling himself out of the house, in hoarseness and great- 
coat, resolved to make the sweetness of the Christmas bill in- 
demnify him for the bitterness of the moment. 

But we shall be getting too much into the interior of the 
houses. By this time the hackney-coaches have all left the 
stands — a good symptom of their having got their day's money. 
Crickets are heard, here and there, amidst the embers of some 
kitchen. A dog follows us. Will nothing make him " go along ?" 
We dodge him in vain ; we run ; we stand and " hish !" at him, 
accompanying the prohibition with dehortatory gestures, and an 
imaginary picking up of a stone. We turn again, and there 
he is vexing our skirts. He even forces us into an angry 
doubt whether he will not starve, if we do not let him go home 
with us. Now if we could but lame him without being cruel ; 
or if we were only an overseer, or a beadle, or a dealer in dog- 
skin ; or a political economist, to think dogs unnecessary. Oh ! 
come, he has turned a corner, he is gone ; we think we see 
him trotting off at a distance, thin and muddy ; and our heart 
misgives us. But it was not our fault ; we were not " hishing " 
at the time. His departure was lucky, for he had got our en- 
joyments into a dilemma ; our " article " would not have known 
what to do with him. These are the perplexities to which your 
sympathizers are liable. We resume our way, independent 
and alone ; for we have no companion this time, except our 
never-to-be-forgotten and ethereal companion, the reader. A 
real arm within another's puts us out of the pale of walking 
that is to be made good. It is good already. A fellow-pedes- 
trian is company ; is the party you have left ; you J^lk and 



chap, iv.] WALKS HOME BY NIGHT. 1S5 

laugh, and there is no longer anything to be contended with. 
But alone, and in bad weather, and with a long way to go, here 
is something for the temper and spirits to grapple with and 
turn to account ; and accordingly we are booted and buttoned 
up, an umbrella over our heads, the rain pelting upon it, and 
the lamp-light shining in the gutters ; " mud-shine," as an artist 
of our acquaintance used to call it, with a gusto of reprobation. 
Now, walk cannot well be worse ; and yet it shall be nothing 
if you meet it heartily. There is a pleasure in overcoming 
obstacles ; mere action is something ; imagination is more ; and 
the spinning of the blood, and vivacity of the mental endeavor, 
act well upon one another, and gradually put you in a state of 
robust consciousness and triumph. Every time you set down 
your leg, you have a respect for it. The umbrella is held in 
the hand like a roaring trophy. 

We are now reaching the country : the fog and rain are over; 
and we meet our old frie.nds the watchmen, staid, heavy, indif- 
ferent, more coat than man, pondering, yet not pondering, old 
but not reverend, immensely useless. No ; useless they are 
not ; for the inmates of the houses think them otherwise, and 
in that imagination they do good. We do not pity the watch- 
men as we used. Old age often cares little for regular sleep. 
They could not be sleeping perhaps if they were in their beds ; 
and certainly they would not be earning. What sleep they 
get is perhaps sweeter in the watch-box, — a forbidden sweet ; 
and they have a sense of importance, and a claim on the per- 
sons in-doors, which, together with the amplitude of their coat- 
ing, and the possession of the box itself, make them feel them- 
selves, not without reason, to be " somebody." They are pecu- 
liar and official. Tomkins is a cobbler as well as they ; but 
then he is no watchman. He cannot speak to " things of night ;" 
nor bid " any man stand in the king's name." He does not 
get fees and gratitude from the old, the infirm, and the drunken ; 
nor " let gentlemen go;" nor is he "a parish-man." The 
churchwardens don't speak to him. If he put himself ever so 
much in the way of " the great plumber," he would not say, 
"How do you find yourself, Tomkins?" — "An ancient and 
quiet watchman." Such he was in the time of Shakspeare, and 



186 THE COMPANION. [chap. iv. 

such he is now. Ancient, because he cannot help it ; and quiet, 
because he will not help it, if possible ; his object being to 
procure quiet on all sides, his own included. For this reason 
he does not make too much noise in crying the hour, nor is of- 
fensively particular in his articulation. No man shall sleep 
the worse for him, out of a horrid sense of the word " three." 
The sound shall be three, four, or one, as suits their mutual 
convenience. HI 

Yet characters are to be found even among watchmen. They 
are not all mere coat, and lump, and indifference. By the way, 
what do they think of in general ? How do they vary the mo- 
notony of their ruminations from one to two, and from two to 
three, and so on ? Are they comparing themselves with the un- 
official cobbler ; thinking of what they shall have for dinner to- 
morrow ; or what, they were about six years ago ; or that their 
lot is the hardest in the world, as insipid old people are apt to 
think,, for the pleasure of grumbling ; or that it has some advan- 
tages nevertheless, besides fees ; and that if they are not in bed, 
their wife is ? 

Of characters, or rather varieties among watchmen, we re- 
member several. One was a Dandy Watchman, who used to 
ply at the top of Oxford -street, next the park. We called him 
the dandy, on account of his utterance. He had a mincing way 
with it, pronouncing the a in the word " past " as it is in hat, 
making a little preparatory hem before he spoke, and then brings 
ing out his " past ten " in a style of genteel indifference ; as if, 
upon the whole, he was of that opinion. 

Another was the Metallic Watchman, who paced the same 
street towards Hanover-square, and had a clang in his voice like 
a trumpet. He was a voice and nothing else ; but any differ- 
ence is something in a watchman. 

A third who cried the hour in Bedford-square, was remarka- 
ble in his calling for being abrupt and loud. There was a fash- 
ion among his tribe just come up at that time, of omitting the 
words " past " and " o'clock," and crying only the number of the 
hour. I know not whether a recollection I have of his perform- 
ance one night is entire matter of fact, or whether any subse- 



chap, iv.] WALKS HOME BY NIGHT. 187 

quent fancies of what might have taken place are mixed up with 
it ; but my impression is, that as I was turning the corner into 
the square with a friend, and was in the midst of a discussion in 
which numbers were concerned, we were suddenly startled, as if 
in solution of it, by a brief and tremendous outcry of — One. 
This paragraph ough^to have been at the bottom of the page, and 
the word printed abriiptly round the corner. 

A fourth watchnM^was a very singular phenomenon, a Read- 
ing Watchman. He had a book, which he read by the light of 
his lantern ; and instead of a pleasant, gave you a very uncom- 
fortable idea of him. It seemed cruel to pitch amidst so many 
discomforts and privations one who had imagination enough to 
wish to be relieved from them. Nothing but a sluggish vacuity 
befits a watchman. 

But the oddest of all was the Sliding Watchman. Think of 
walking up a street in the depth of a frosty winter, with long ice 
in the gutters, and sleet over head, and then figure to yourself a 
sort of bale of a man in white coming sliding towards you with 
a lantern in one hand, and an umbrella over his head. It was 
the oddest mixture of luxury and hardship, of juvenility and old 
age ! But this looked agreeable. Animal spirits carry every- 
thing before them ; and our invincible friend seemed a watch- 
man for Rabelais. Time was run at and butted by him like a 
goat. The slide seemed to bear him half through the night at 
once ; he slipped from out of his box and his common-places at 
one rush of a merry thought, and seemed to say, " Everything's 
in imagination ; — here goes the whole weight of my office. " 

But we approach our home. How still the trees ! How deli- 
ciously asleep the country ! How beautifully grim and noctur- 
nal this wooded avenue of ascent, against the cold white sky ! 
The watchmen and patroles, which the careful citizens have 
planted in abundance within a mile of their doors, salute us with 
their " good mornings ; M — not so welcome as we pretend ; for we 
ought not to be out so late ; and it is one of the assumptions of 
these fatherly old fellows to remind us of it. Some fowls, who 
have made a strange roost in a tree, flutter as we pass them ; — 



18S THE COMPANION. [chap. iv. 

another pull up the hill, unyielding ; a few strides on a level ; 
and there is the light in the window, the eye of the warm soul of 
the house, — one's home. How particular, and yet how univer- 
sal, is that word ; and how surely does it deposit every one for 
himself in his own nest ! 



i 



chap, v.] EXISTING FASHIONS. 189 



CHAPTER V. 

Secret of some existing Fashions. 

Fashions have a short life or a long one, according as it suits 
the makers to startle us with a variety, or save themselves obser- 
vation of a defect. Hence fashions set by young or handsome peo- 
ple are fugitive, and such are, for the most part, those that bring 
custom to the milliner. If we keep watch on an older one, we shall 
generally trace it, unless of general convenience, to some pertina- 
city on the part of the aged. Even fashions, otherwise convenient, 
as the trousers that have so long taken place of small clothes, 
often perhaps owe their continuance to some general defect which 
they help to screen. The old are glad to retain them, and so be 
confounded with the young ; and among the latter, there are more 
limbs perhaps to which loose clothing is acceptable, than tight. 
More legs and knees, we suspect, rejoice in those cloaks, than 
would be proud to acknowledge themselves in a shoe and stock- 
ing. The pertinacity of certain male fashions during the last 
twenty years, we think we can trace to a particular source. If 
it be objected, that the French partook of them, andkhat our 
modes have generally come from that country, we suspect that 
the old court in France had more to do with them, than Napo- 
leon's, which was confessedly masculine and military. The old 
French in this country, and the old noblesse in the other, wore 
bibs and trousers, when the Emperor went in a plain stock and 
delighted to show his good leg. For this period, if for this only, 
w r e are of opinion, that whether the male fashions did or did not 
originate in France, other circumstances have conspired to retain 
them in both countries, for which the revolutionary government 
cannot account. Mr. Hazlitt informs us in his Life of Napoleon, 
that during the consulate, all the courtiers were watching the 
head of the state to know whether mankind were to wear their 



190 THE COMPANION. [chap. v. 

own hair or powder ; and that Bonaparte luckily settled the mat- 
ter, by deciding in favor of nature and cleanliness. But here 
the revolutionary authority stopped ; nor in this instance did it 
begin : for it is understood, that it was the plain head of Dr. 
Franklin, when he was ambassador at Paris, that first amused, 
and afterwards interested, the giddy polls of his new acquaint- 
ances ; who went and did likewise. Luckily, this was a fashion 
that suited all ages, and on that account it has survived. But 
the bibs, and the trousers, and the huge neckcloths, whence come 
they ? How is it, at least, that they have been so long retained 1 
Observe that polished old gentleman, who bows so well,* and is 
conversing with the most agreeable of physicians. f He made a 
great impression in his youth, and was naturally loath to give it 
up. On a sudden he finds his throat not so juvenile as he could 
wish it. Up goes his stock, and enlarges. He rests both his 
cheeks upon it, the chin settling comfortably upon a bend in the 
middle, as becomes its delicacy. By and bye, he thinks the 
cheeks themselves do not present as good an aspect as with so 
young a heart might in reason be expected ; and forth issue the 
points of his shirt-collar, and give them an investment at once 
cherishing and spirited. Thirdly, he suspects his waist to have 
played him a trick of good living, and surpassed the bounds of 
youth and elegance before he was well aware of it. Therefore, 
to keep it seemingly, if not actually within limits, forth he sends 
a frill in the first instance, and a padded set of lapels afterwards. 
He happens to look on the hand that does all this, and discerns 
with a sigh that it is not quite the same hand to look at, which 
the women have been transported to kiss ; though for that matter 
they will kiss it still, and be transported too. The wrist-band 
looks forth, and says, " Shall I help to cover it ? " and it is al- 
lowed to do so, being a gentlemanly finish, and impossible to the 
mechanical. But finally the legs : they were amongst the hand- 
somest in the world ; and how did they not dance ! What con- 
quests did they not achieve in the time of hoop-petticoats and 
toupees ! And long afterwards, were not Apollo and Hercules 
found in them together, to the delight of the dowagers ! And 

* The late King. f Sir William K. 



chap, iv.] EXISTING FASHIONS. 191 

shall the gods be treated with disrespect, when the heaviness of 
change comes upon them ? No. Round comes the kindly trou- 
serian veil (as Dyer of " The Fleece " would have had it) ; the 
legs retreat, like other conquerors, into retirement ; and only the 
lustre of their glory remains, such as Bonaparte might have en- 
vied. 



192 THE COMPANION. [chap. vi. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Rain out of a Clear Sky. 

In a work, Be Varia Historia, written after the manner of 
iElian, by Leonico Tomeo, an elegant scholar of the fifteenth 
century, we meet with the following pretty story: — When Pha- 
lantus led his colony out of Sparta into the south of Italy, he 
consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was informed that he should 
know the region he was to inhabit, by the fall of a plentiful 
shower out of a clear sky. Full of doubt and anxiety at this 
answer, and unable to meet with any one who could interpret it 
for him, he took his departure, arrived in Italy, but could succeed 
in occupying no region,-— in capturing no city. This made him 
fall to considering the oracle more particularly ; upon which he 
came to the conclusion, that he had undertaken a foolish project, 
and that the gods meant to tell him so ; for that a sky should be 
clear, and yet the rain out of it plentiful, now seemed to him a* 
manifest impossibility. 

Tired out with the anxious thoughts arising from this conclu- 
sion, he laid his head on the lap of his wife, who had come with 
him, and took such a draught of sleep as the fatigue of sorrow 
is indulged with, like other toil. His wife loved him ; and as he 
lay thus tenderly in her lap, she kept looking upon his face ; till 
thinking of the disappointments he had met with, and the perils 
he had still to undergo, she began to weep bitterly, so that the 
tears fell plentifully upon him, and awoke him. He looked up, 
and seeing those showers out of her eyes, hailed at last the ora- 
cle with joy, for his wife's name was iEthra, which signifies " a 
clear sky ; " and thus he knew that he had arrived at the region 
where he was to settle. The next night he took Tarentum, 
which was the greatest city in those parts ; and he and his pos- 
terity reigned in that quarter of Italy, as you may see in Virgil. 



chap, vn.1 THE MOUNTAIN OF THE TWO LOVERS. 193 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Mountain of the Two Lovers. 

We forget in what book it was, many years ago, that we read 
the story of a lover who was to win his mistress by carrying her 
to the top of a mountain, and how he did win her, and how they 
ended their days on the same spot. 

We think the scene was in Switzerland ; but the mountain, 
though high enough to tax his stout heart to the uttermost, must 
have been among the lowest. Let us fancy it a good lofty hill 
in the summer-time. It was, at any rate, so high, that the father 
of the lady, a proud noble, thought it impossible for a young 
man so burdened to scale it. For this reason alone, in scorn, he 
bade him do it, and his daughter should be his. 

The peasantry assembled in the valley to witness so extraor- 
dinary a sight. They measured the mountain with their eyes ; 
they communed with one another, and shook their heads ; but 
all admired the young man ; and some of his fellows, looking 
at their mistresses, thought they could do as much. The father 
was on horseback, apart and sullen, repenting that he had sub- 
jected his daughter even to the show of such a hazard ; but he 
thought it would teach his inferiors a lesson. The young man 
(the son of a small land-proprietor, who had some pretensions 
to wealth, though none to nobility) stood, respectful-looking, but 
confident, rejoicing in his heart that he should win his mistress, 
though at the cost of a noble pain, which he could hardly think 
of as a pain, considering who it was that he was to carry. If he 
died for it, he should at least have had her in his arms, and have 
looked her in the face. To clasp her person in that manner was 
a pleasure which he contemplated with such transport as is 
known only to real lovers ; for none others know how respect 
heightens the joy of dispensing with formality, and how the dis- 
14 



194 THE COMPANION. [chap. vii. 

pensing with the formality ennobles and makes grateful the re- 
spect. 

The lady stood by the side of her father, pale, desirous, and 
dreading. She thought her lover would succeed, but only be- 
cause she thought him in every respect the noblest of his sex, 
and that nothing was too much for his strength and valor. 
Great fears came over her nevertheless. She knew not what 
might happen, in the chances common to all. She felt the bit- 
terness of being herself the burden to him and the task ; and 
dared neither to look at her father nor the mountain. She fixed 
her eyes, now on the crowd (which nevertheless she beheld not), 
and now on her hand and her fingers' ends, which she doubled 
up towards her with a pretty pretence, — the only deception she 
had ever used. Once or twice a daughter or a mother slipped 
out of the crowd, and coming up to her, notwithstanding their 
fears of the lord baron, kissed that hand which she knew not 
what to do with. 

The father said, " Now, sir, to put an end to this mummery •" 
and the lover, turning pale for the first time, took up the lady. 

The spectators rejoice to see the manner in which he moves 
off, slow but secure, and as if encouraging his mistress. They 
mount the hill ; they proceed well ; he halts an instant before 
he gets midway, and seems refusing something ; then ascends 
at a quicker rate ; and now being at the midway point, shifts 
the lady from one side to the other. The spectators give a 
great shout. The baron, with an air of indifference, bites the 
tip of his gauntlet, and then casts on them an eye of rebuke. 
At the shout the lover resumes his way. Slow but not feeble is 
his step, yet it gets slower. He stops again, and they think they 
see the lady kiss him on the forehead. The women begin to 
tremble, but the men say he will be victorious. He resumes 
again ; he is half-way between the middle and the top ; he 
rushes, he stops, he staggers ; but he does not fall. Another 
shout from the men, and he resumes once more ; two-thirds of 
the remaining part of the way are conquered. They are cer- 
tain the lady kisses him on the forehead and on the eyes. The 
women burst into tears, and the stoutest men look pale. He 
ascends slowlier than ever, but seeming to be more sure. He 



chap, vii.] THE MOUNTAIN OF THE TWO LOVERS. 195 

halts, but it is only to plant his foot to go on again ; and thus he 
picks his way, planting his foot at every step, and then gaining 
ground with an effort. The lady lifts up her arms, as if to 
lighten him. See ! he is almost at the top ; he stops, he strug- 
gles, he moves sideways, taking very little steps, and bringing 
one foot every time close to the other. Now — he is all but on the 
top ; he halts again ; he is fixed ; he staggers. A groan goes 
through the multitude. Suddenly, he turns full front towards 
the top ; it is luckily almost a level ; he staggers, but it is for- 
ward : — Yes : — every limb in the multitude makes a movement 
as if it would assist him : — see at last ! he is on the top ; and 
down he falls flat with his burden. An enormous shout ! lie 
has won : he has won. Now he has a right to caress his mis- 
tress, and she is caressing him, for neither of them gets up. If 
he has fainted, it is with joy, and it is in her arms. 

The baron put spurs to his horse, the crowd following him. 
Half-way he is obliged to dismount ; they ascend the rest of the 
hill together, the crowd silent and happy, the baron ready to 
burst with shame and impatience. They reach the top. The 
lovers are face to face on the ground, the lady clasping him with 
both arms, his lying on each side. 

11 Traitor !" exclaimed the baron, " thou hast practised this 
feat before, on purpose to deceive me. Arise !" " You cannot 
expect it, sir," said a worthy man, who was rich enough to speak 
his mind: "Samson himself might take his rest after such a 
deed !" 

" Part them !" said the baron. 

Several persons went up, not to part them, but to congratulate 
and keep them together. These people look close ; they kneel 
down ; they bend an ear ; they bury their faces upon them. 
" God forbid they should ever be parted more," said a venera- 
ble man ; '•' they never can be." He turned his old face stream- 
ing with tears, and looked up at the baron : — " Sir, they are 
dead!" 



196 THE COMPANION. [chap, viii. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The True Story of Vertumnus and Pomona. 

Weak and uninitiated are they who talk of things modern as 
opposed to the idea of antiquity ; who fancy that the Assyrian 
monarchy must have preceded tea-drinking ; and that no Sims 
or Gregson walked in a round hat and trousers before the times 
of Inachus. Plato has informed us (and therefore everybody 
ought to know) that, at stated periods of time, everything which 
has taken place on earth is acted over again. There have 
been a thousand or a million reigns, for instance, of Charles the 
Second, and there will be an infinite number more : the tooth- 
ache we had in the year 1811, is making ready for us some 
thousands of years hence ; again shall people be wise and in 
love as surely as the May-blossoms re-appear ; and again will 
Alexander make a fool of himself at Babylon, and Bonaparte in 
Russia. 

Among the heaps of modern stories, which are accounted 
ancient, and which have been deprived of their true appearance, 
by the alteration of coloring and costume, there is none more 
decidedly belonging to modern times than that of Vertumnus 
and Pomona. Vertumnus was, and will be, a young fellow, re- 
markable for his accomplishments, in the several successive 
reigns of Charles the Second ; and, I find, practised his story 
over in the autumn of the year 1680. He was the younger 
brother of a respectable family in Herefordshire ; and from his 
genius at turning himself to a variety of shapes, came to be 
called, in after-ages, by his classical name. In like manner, 
Pomona, the heroine of the story, being the goddess of those 
parts, and singularly fond of their scenery and productions, the 
Latin poets, in after-ages, transformed her adventures according 
to their fashion, making her a goddess of mythology, and giving 



chap, viii.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. 197 

her a name after her beloved fruits. Her real name was Miss 
Appleton. I shall therefore waive that matter once for all ; and 
retaining only the appellation which poetry has rendered so 
pleasant, proceed with the true story. 

Pomona was a beauty like her name, all fruit and bloom. She 
was a ruddy brunette, luxuriant without grossness ; and had a 
spring in her step, like apples dancing on a bough. (I'd put all 
this into verse, to which it has a natural tendency ; but I haven't 
time.) It was no poetical figure to say of her, that her lips were 
cherries, and her cheeks a peach. Her locks, in clusters about 
her face, trembled heavily as she walked. The color called 
Pomona-green was named after her favorite dress. Sometimes 
in her clothes she imitated one kind of fruit and sometimes ano- 
ther, philosophising in a pretty poetical manner on the common 
nature of things, and saying there was more in the similes of 
her lovers than they suspected. Her dress now resembled a 
burst of white blossoms, and now of red ; but her favorite one 
was green, both coat and boddice, from which her beautiful face 
looked forth like a bud. To see her tending her trees in her or- 
chard (for she would work herself, and sing all the while like a 
milk-maid) — to see her I say tending the fruit-trees, never caring 
for letting her boddice slip a little off her shoulders, and turning 
away now and then to look up at a bird, when her lips would 
glance in the sunshine like cherries bedewed, — such a sight, you 
may imagine, was not to be had everywhere. The young clowns 
would get up in the trees for a glimpse of her, over the garden- 
wall ; and swear she was like an angel in Paradise. 

Everybody was in love with her. The squire was in love 
with her ; the attorney was in love ; the parson was particularly 
in love. The peasantry in their smock-frocks, old and young, 
were all in love. You never saw such a loving place in your 
life ; yet somehow or other the women were not jealous, nor 
fared the worse. The people only seemed to have grown the 
kinder. Their hearts overflowed to all about them. Such 
toasts at the great house ! The squire's name was Payne, 
which afterwards came to be called Pan. Pan, Payne (Paynim), 
Pagan, a villager. The race was so numerous, that country- 
gentlemen obtained the name of Paynim in general, as distin- 



198 THE INDICATOR. [ [chap. viii. 

guished from the nobility ; a circumstance which has not es- 
caped the learning of Milton : 

" Both Paynim and the Peers." 

Silenus was Cy or Cymon Lenox, the host of the Tun, a fat 
merry old fellow, renowned in the song as Old Sir Cymon the 
King. He was in love too. All the Satyrs, or rude wits of the 
neighborhood, and all the Hauns, or softer-spoken fellows, — none 
of them escaped. There was also a Quaker gentleman, I for- 
get his name, who made himself conspicuous. Pomona confess- 
ed to herself that he had merit ; but it was so unaccompanied 
with anything of the ornamental or intellectual, that she could 
not put up with him. Indeed, though she was of a loving na- 
ture, and had every other reason to wish herself settled (for she 
was an heiress and an orphan), she could not find it in her heart 
to respond to any of the rude multitude around her ; which at 
last occasioned such impatience in them, and uneasiness to her- 
self, that she was fain to keep close at home, and avoid the lanes 
and country assemblies, for fear of being carried off. It was 
then that the clowns used to mount the trees outside her garden- 
wall to get a sight of her. 

Pomona wrote to a cousin she had in town, of the name of 
Cerintha. — " Oh, my dear Cerintha, what am I to do ? I could 
laugh while I say it, though the tears positively come into my 
eyes ; but it is a sad thing to be an heiress with ten thousand a 
year, and one's guardian just dead. Nobody will let me alone. 
And the worst of it is, that while the rich animals that pester 
me, disgust one with talking about their rent-rolls, the younger 
brothers force me to be suspicious of their views upon mine. I 
could throw all my money into the Wye for vexation. God 
knows I do not care two-pence for it. Oh Cerintha ! I wish you 
were unmarried, and could change yourself into a man, and come 
and deliver me ; for you are disinterested and sincere, and that 
is all I require. At all events, I will run for it, and be with you 
before winter : for here I cannot stay. Your friend the Quaker 
has just rode by. He says, * verily,' that I am cold ! I say 



chap, viii.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA 199 

verily he is no wiser than his horse ; and that I could pitch him 
after my money." 

Cerintha sympathized heartily with her cousin, but she was 
perplexed to know what to do. There were plenty of wits and 
young fellows of her acquaintance, both rich and poor; but 
only one whom she thought fit for her charming cousin, and he 
was a younger brother as poor as a rat. Besides, he was not 
only liable to suspicion on that account, but full of delicacies of 
his own, and the last man in the world to hazard a generous 
woman's dislike. This was no other than our friend Vertumnus. 
His real name was Vernon. He lived about five miles from 
Pomona, and was the only young fellow of any vivacity who had 
not been curious enough to get a sight of her. He had got a 
notion that she was proud. " She may be handsome," thought 
he ; " but a handsome proud face is but a handsome ugly one 
to my thinking, and I'll not venture my poverty to her ill-humor." 
Cerintha had half-made up her mind to undeceive him through 
the medium of his sister, who was an acquaintance of hers ; but an 
accident did it for her. Vertumnus was riding one day with some 
friends, who had been rejected, when passing by Pomona's orchard, 
he saw one of her clownish admirers up in the trees, peeping at her 
over the wall. The gaping, unsophisticated admiration of the lad 
made them stop. " They are at it still," said one of our hero's 
companions, " they are at it still. Why, you booby, did you 
never see a proud woman before, that you stand gaping there, as 
if your soul had gone out of ye?" " Proud," said the lad, look- 
ing down : — " a wouldn't say nay to a fly, if gentlefolks wouldn't 
tease 'un so." "Come," said our hero, " I'll take this opportu- 
nity to see for myself." He was up in the tree in an instant, and 
almost as speedily exclaimed, " What a face !" • 

" He has it !" cried the others, laughing : — " fairly struck 
through the ribs. Look, if looby and he arn't sworn friends on 
the thought of it." 

It looked very like it, certainly. Our hero had scarcely gazed 
at her, when, without turning away his eyes, he clapped his hand 
upon that of the peasant, with a hearty shake, and said, " You're 
right, my friend. If there is pride in that face, truth itself is a 
lie. What a face ! What eyes ! What a figure !" 



200 THE COMPANION. [chap. viii. 

Pomona was observing her old gardener fill a basket. From 
time to time he looked up at her, smiling and talking. She was 
eating a plum ; and as she said something that made them 
laugh, her rosy mouth sparkled with all its pearls in the sun. 

" Pride I" thought Vertumnus : — " there's no more pride in that 
charming mouth, than there is folly enough to relish my fine 
companions here." 

Our hero returned home more thoughtful than he came, re- 
plying but at intervals to the raillery of those with him, and then 
giving them pretty savage cuts. He was more out of humor 
with his poverty than he had ever felt, and not at all satisfied 
with the accomplishments which might have emboldened him to 
forget it. However, in spite of his delicacies, he felt it would 
be impossible not to hazard rejection like the rest. He only 
made up his mind to set about paying these addresses in a dif- 
ferent manner ; — though how it was to be done he could not 
very well see. His first impulse was to go to her and state the 
plain case at once ; to say how charming she was, and how 
poor her lover, and that nevertheless he did not care two. pence 
for her riches, if she would but believe him. The only delight 
of riches would be to share them with her. " But then," said 
he, " how is she to take my word for that ?" 

On arriving at home he found his sister prepared to tell him 
what he had found out for himself, — that Pomona was not proud. 
Unfortunately she added, that the beautiful heiress had acquired 
a horror of her younger brothers. " Ay," thought he, " there 
it is. I shall not get her, precisely because I have at once the 
greatest need of her money, and the greatest contempt for it. 
Alas, yet not so ! I have not contempt for anything that belongs 
to*her, even her money. How heartily could I accept it from 
her, if she knew me, and if she is as generous as I take her to 
be ! How delightful would it be to plant, to build, to indulge a 
thousand expenses in her company ! O, those rascals of rich 
men, without sense or taste, that are now going about, spending 
their money as they please, and buying my jewels and my cabi- 
nets, that I ought to be making her presents of. I could tear 
my hair to think of it." 

It happened, luckily or unluckily for our hero, that he was the 



chap, viii.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. 201 

best amateur actor that had ever appeared. Betterton could not 
perform Hamlet better, nor Lacy a friar. 

He disguised himself, and contrived to get hired in his lady's 
household as a footman. It was a difficult matter, all the other 
servants having been there since she was a child, and just grown 
old enough to escape the passion common to all who saw her. 
They loved her like a daughter of their own, and were indignant 
at the trouble her lovers gave her. Vertumnus, however, made 
out his case so well, that they admitted him. For a time, all 
went on smoothly. Yes : for three or four weeks he performed 
admirably, confining himself to the real footman. Nothing could 
exceed the air of indifferent zeal with which he waited at table. 
He was respectful, he was attentive, even officious ; but still as 
o a footman's mistress, not as to a lover's. He looked in her 
face, as if he did not wish to kiss her ; said " Yes, ma'am " and 
" No, ma'am," like any other servant ; and consented, not with- 
out many pangs to his vanity, to wear proper footman's clothes : 
namely, such as did not fit him. He even contrived, by a violent 
effort, to suppress all appearance of emotion, when he doubled 
up the steps of her chariot, after seeing the finest foot and ancle 
in the world. In his haste to subdue this emotion, he was one 
day near betraying himself. He forgot his part so far, as to 
clap the door with more vehemence than usual. His mistress 
started, and gave a cry. He thought he had shut her hand in, 
and opening the door again, with more vehemence, and as pale 
as death, exclaimed, " In the name of Mercy ! what have I done 
to her?" 

" Nothing, James," said his mistress, smiling ; " only another 
time you need not be in quite such a hurry." She was surprised 
at the turn of his words, and at a certain air which she observed 
for the first time ; but the same experience which might have ena- 
bled her to detect him, led her, by a reasonable vanity, to think that 
love had exalted her footman's manners. This made her observe 
him with some interest afterwards, and notice how good-looking he 
was, and that his shape was better than his clothes : but he 
continued to act his part so well, that she suspected nothing 
further. She only resolved, if he gave any more evidences of 
being in love, to despatch him after his betters. 



202 THE COMPANION. [chap viii. 

By degrees, our hero's nature became too much for his art. 
He behaved so well among his fellow servants, that they all took 
a liking to him. Now, when we please others, and they show 
it, we wish to please them more : and it turned out that James 
could play on the viol di gamba. He played so well, that his 
mistress must needs inquire " what musician they had in the 
house." " James, madam." — A week or two after, somebody 
was reading a play, and making them all die with laughter. — 
" Who is that reading so well there, and making you all a parcel 
of mad-caps ?" — " It's only James, madam."—" I have a pro- 
digious footman !" thought Pomona. Another day, my lady's- 
maid came up all in tears to do something for her mistress, and 
could scarcely speak. " What's the matter, Lucy V- " Oh, 
James, madam !" Her lady blushed a little, and was going to 
be angry. 

" I hope he has not been uncivil." 

" Oh no, ma'am : only I could not bear his being turned out 
o' doors !" 

" Turned out of doors !" 

" Yes, ma'am ; and their being so cruel as to singe his white 
head." 

" Singe his white head ! Surely the girl's head is turned. 
W r hat is it, poor soul ?" 

" Oh, nothing, ma'am. Only the old king in the play, as your 
ladyship knows. They turn him out o' doors, and singe his 
white head ; and Mr. James did it so natural like, that he has 
made us all of a drown of tears. T'other day he called me his 
Ophelia, and was so angry with me I could have died." — " This 
man is no footman," said the lady. She sent for him up stairs, 
and the butler with him. " Pray, sir, may I beg the favor of 
knowing who you are ?" The abruptness of this question totally 
confounded our hero. 

"Do not t think it worth your while, madam, to be angry with 
me, and I will tell you all." 

" Worth my while, sir ! I know not what you mean by its 
being worth my while," cried our heroine, who really felt more 
angry than she wished to be : " but when an impostor comes 



chap, vm.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. 203 

into the house, it is natural to wish to be on one's guard 
against him." 

" Impostor, madam !" said he, reddening in his turn, and rising 
with an air of dignity. " It is true," he added in an humbler 
tone, " I am not exactly what I seem to be ; but I am a younger 
brother of a good family, and — " 

" A younger brother!" exclaimed Pomona, turning away with 
a look of despair. 

" Oh, those harsh words !" thought Vertumnus ; " they have 
undone me. ] must go ; and yet it is hard." 

" I go, madam," said he, in a hurry : — " believe me in only 
this, that I shall give you no unbecoming disturbance ; and I 
must vindicate myself so far as to say, that I did not come into 
this house for what you suppose." Then giving her a look of 
inexpressible tenderness and respect, and retiring as he said it, 
with a low bow, he added, " May neither imposture nor unhap- 
piness ever come near you." 

Pomona could not help thinking of the strange footman she 
had had. "'He did not come into the house for what I sup- 
posed." She did not know whether to be pleased or not at this 
phrase. What did he mean by it? What did he think she 
supposed ? Upon the whole, she found her mind occupied with 
the man a little too much, and proceeded to busy herself with 
her orchard. 

There was now more caution observed in admitting new ser- 
vants into the house ; yet a new gardener's assistant came, who 
behaved like a reasonable man for two months. He then pas- 
sionately exclaimed one morning, as Pomona was rewarding him 
for some roses, " I cannot bear it !" — and turned out to be our 
hero, who was obliged to decamp. My lady became more cau- 
tious than ever, and would speak to all the new servants herself. 
One day a very remarkable thing occurred. A whole side of 
the green-house was smashed to pieces. The glazier was sent 
for, not without suspicion of being the perpetrator ; and the man's 
way of behaving strengthened it, for he stood looking about him, 
and handling the glass to no purpose. His assistant did all the 
work, and yet somehow did not seem to get on with it. The 
truth was, the fellow was innocent and yet not so, for he had 



204 THE COMPANION. [chap. viii. 

brought our hero with him as his journeyman. Pomona, watch- 
ing narrowly, discovered the secret, but for reasons best known 
to herself, pretended otherwise, and the men were to come again 
next day. 

That same evening my lady's maid's cousin's husband's aunt 
came to see her, — a free, jolly, maternal old dame, who took 
the liberty of kissing the mistress of the house, and thanking 
her for all favors. Pomona had never received such a long 
kiss. " Excuse," cried the housewife, " an old body who has 
had daughters and grand-daughters, ay, and three husbands to 
boot, rest their souls ! but dinner always makes me bold — old 
and bold as we say in Gloucestershire — old and bold ; and her 
ladyship's sweet face is like an angel's in heaven." All this 
was said in a voice at once loud and trembling, as if the natural 
jollity of the old lady was counteracted by her years. 

Pomona felt a little confused at this liberty of speech ; but 
her good-nature was always uppermost, and she respected the 
privileges of age. So, with a blushing face, not well knowing 
what to say, she mentioned something about the old lady's three 
husbands, and said she hardly knew whether to pity her most for 
losing so many friends, or to congratulate the gentlemen on so 
cheerful a companion. The old lady's breath seemed to be 
taken away by the elegance of this compliment, for she stood 
looking and saying not a word. At last she made signs of being 
a little deaf, and Betty repeated as well as she could what her 
mistress had said. " She is an angel, for certain," cried the 
gossip, and kissed her again. Then perceiving that Pomona 
was prepared to avoid a repetition of this freedom, she said, 
" But, why doesn't her sweet ladyship marry herself, and make 
somebody's life a heaven upon earth ? They tell me she's 
frightened at the cavaliers and the money-hunters, and all that ; 
must there be no honest man that's poor ; and mayn't the dear 
sweet soul be the jewel of some one's eye, because she has money 
in her pocket ?" 

Pomona, who had entertained some such reflections as these 
herself, hardly knew what to answer ; but she laughed and 
made some pretty speech. 

" Ay, ay," resumed the old woman. " Well, there's no know- 



chap, viii.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. 205 



ing." (Here she heaved a great sigh.) "And so my lady is 
mighty curious in plants and apples, they tell me, and quite a 
gardener, love her! and rears me cartloads of peaches. Why, 
her face is a peach, or I should like to know what is. But 
it didn't come of itself neither. No, no ; for that matter there 
were peaches before it ; and Eve didn't live alone, I warrant 
me, or we should have no peaches now, for all her garden- 
ing. Well, well, my sweet young lady, don't blush and be 
angry, for I am but a poor foolish, old body, you know, old 
enough to be your grandmother ; but I can't help thinking it a 
pity, that's the truth on't. Oh dear ! Well, gentlefolks will 
have their fegaries, but it was very different in my time, you 
know ; and now to speak the plain scripter truth ; what would 
the world come to, and where would her sweet ladyship be her- 
self, I should like to know, if her own mother, that's now an 
angel in Heaven, had refused to keep company with her lady- 
ship's father, because she brought him a good estate, and made 
him the happiest man on the earth !" 

The real love that existed between Pomona's father and 
mother being thus brought to her recollection, touched our hero- 
ine's feelings ; and looking at the old dame, with tears in her 
eyes, she begged her to stay and take some tea, and she would 
see her again before she went away. " Ay, and that I will, 
and a thousand thanks into the bargain from one who has been a 
mother herself, and I can't help crying to see my lady in tears. 
I could kiss 'em off, if I warn't afraid of being troublesome ; and 
so, bless her, I'll make bold to make her my curtsey again before 
I go." 

The old body seemed really affected, and left the room with 
more quietness than Pomona had looked for. Betty meanwhile 
showed an eagerness to get her away, which was a little re- 
markable. In less than half an hour, there was a knock at the 
parlor door, and Pomona saying, " Come in," the door was held 
again by somebody for a few seconds, during which there was a 
loud and apparently angry whisper of voices. Our heroine, not 
without agitation, heard the words, " No, no !" and " Yes," re- 
peated with vehemence, and then, " I tell you I must and will ; 
she will forgive you, be assured, and me too, for she'll never see 



206 THE COMPANION. [chap. vm. 

me again." And at these words the door was opened by a gal- 
lant-looking young man, who closed it behind him, and advanc- 
ing with a low bow, spoke as follows : — 

" If you are alarmed, madam, which I confess you reasona- 
bly may be at this intrusion, I beseech you to be perfectly cer- 
tain that you will never be so alarmed again, nor indeed ever 
again set your eyes on me, if it so please you. You see before 
you, madam, that unfortunate younger brother (for I will not 
omit even that title to your suspicion), who, seized with an in- 
vincible passion as he one day beheld you from your garden 
wall, has since run the chance of your displeasure, by coming 
into the house under a variety of pretences, and inasmuch as 
he has violated the truth has deserved it. But one truth he 
has not violated, which is, that never man entertained a passion 
sincerer : and God is my witness, madam, how foreign to my 
heart is that accursed love of money (I beg your pardon, but 
I confess it agitates me in my turn to speak of it), which 
other people's advances and your own modesty have natu- 
rally induced you to suspect in every person situated as I am. 
Forgive me, madam, for every alarm I have caused you, this 
last one above all. I could not deny to my love and my re- 
pentance the mingled bliss and torture of this moment ; but 
as I am really and passionately a lover of truth as well as of 
yourself, this is the last trouble 1 shall give you, unless you 
are pleased to admit what I confess I have very little hope of, 
which is a respectful pressure of my suit in future. Pardon 
me even these words, if they displease you. You have nothing 
to do but to bid me — leave you ; and when he quits this 
apartment, Harry Vernon troubles you no more." 

A silence ensued for the space of a few seconds. The gen- 
tleman was very pale ; so was the lady. At length she said, in 
a very undertone, " This surprise, sir — I was not insensible — I 
mean, I perceived — sure, sir, it is not Mr. Vernon, the brother 
of my cousin's friend, to whom I am speaking ?" 

" The same, madam." 

" And why not at once, sir — I mean — that is to say — Forgive 
me, sir, if circumstances conspire to agitate me a little, and to 
throw me in doubt what I ought to say. I wish to say what is 



chap, viii.] STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA. 207 

becoming, and to retain your respect ;" and the lady trembled 
as she said it. 

" My respect, madam, was never profounder than it is at this 
moment, even though I dare begin to hope that you will not 
think it disrespectful on my part to adore you. If I might but 
hope, that months or years of service — " 

" Be seated, sir, I beg ; I am very forgetful. I am an orphan, 
Mr. Vernon, and you must make allowances as a gentleman " 
(here her voice became a little louder) " for anything in which 
I may seem to forget, either what is due to you or to myself. " 

The gentleman had not taken a chair, but at the end of this 
speech he approached the lady, and led her to her own seat with 
an air full of reverence. 

" Ah, madam," said he, " if you could but fancy you had 
known me these five years, you would at least give me credit for 
enough truth, and I hope enough tenderness and respectfulness 
of heart (for they all go together) to be certain of the feelings I 
entertain towards your sex in general ; much more towards one 
whose nature strikes me with such a gravity of admiration at 
this moment, that praise even falters on my tongue. Could I 
dare hope that you meant to say anything more kind to me than 
a common expression of good wishes, T would dare to say, that 
the sweet truth of your nature not only warrants your doing so, 
but makes it a part of its humanity." 

" Will you tell me, Mr. Vernon, what induced you to say so 
decidedly to my servant (for I heard it at the door) that you 
were sure I should never see you again." 

" Yes, madam, I will ; and nevertheless I feel all the force of 
your inquiry. It was the last little instinctive stratagem that 
love induced me to play, even when I was going to put on the 
whole force of my character and my love of truth ! for I did 
indeed believe that you would discard me, though I was not 
so sure of it as I pretended." 

" There, sir," said Pomona, coloring in all the beauty of joy 
and love, " there is ray band. I give it to the lo-ver of -tnifcft ; 
but truth no less forces me to acknowledge, that my heart had 
not been unshaken by some former occurrences." 

" Charming and adorable creature !" cried our hero, after 



208 THE COMPANION. [chap. vhi. 

he had recovered from the kiss which he gave her. But 
here we leave them to themselves. Our heroine confessed, 
that from what she now knew of her feelings, she must 
have been inclined to look with compassion on him before ; 
but added, that she never could have been sure she loved him, 
much less had the courage to tell him so, till she had known 
him in his own candid shape. 

And this, and no other, is the true story of Vertumnus and 
Pomona. 



chap, k.] THE GRACES OF PIG-DRIVING. . 209 



CHAPTER IX. 

On the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-Driving. 

From the perusal of this article we beg leave to warn off vul- 
gar readers of all denominations, whether of the " great vulgar 
or the small. 55 Warn, did we say ? We drive them off; for 
Horace tells us that they, as well as pigs, are to be so treated. 
Odi profanum vulgus, says he, et arceo. But do thou lend thine 
ear, gentle shade of Goldsmith, who didst make thy bear-leader 
denounce " everything as is low ;" and thou Steele, who didst hu- 
manize upon public-houses and puppet-shows ; and Fielding, 
thou whom the great Richardson, less in that matter (and some 
others) than thyself, did accuse of vulgarity, because thou didst 
discern natural gentility in a footman, and yet was not to be 
taken in by the airs of Pamela and my lady G. 

The title is a little startling ; but " style and sentiment," as a 
lady said, " can do anything." Remember then, gentle reader, 
that talents are not to be despised in the humblest walks of life ; 
we will add, nor in the muddiest. The other day we happened 
to be among a set of spectators who could not help stopping to 
admire the patience and address with which a pig-driver hud- 
dled and cherished onward his drove of unaccommodating 
eleves, down a street in the suburbs. He was a born genius for 
a manceuvre. Had he originated in a higher sphere, he would 
have been a general, or a stage-manager, or at least the head 
of a set of monks. Conflicting interests were his forte ; pig- 
headed wills, and proceedings hopeless. To see the hand with 
which he did it ! How hovering, yet firm ; how encouraging, 
yet compelling ; how indicative of the space on each side of 
him, and yet of the line before him ; how general, how particu- 
lar, how perfect ! No barber's could quiver about a head with 
more lightness of apprehension ; no cook's pat up and propor- 
15 



210 THE COMPANION. [chap. ix. 

tion the side of a pasty with a more final eye. The whales, 
quoth old Chapman, speaking of Neptune. 

The whales exulted under him, and knew their mighty king. 

The pigs did not exult, but they knew their king. Unwilling 
was their subjection, but " more in sorrow than in anger/' 
They were too far gone for rage. Their case was hopeless. 
They did not see why they should proceed, but they felt them- 
selves bound to do so ; forced, conglomerated, crowded onwards, 
irresistibly impelled by fate and Jenkins. Often would they 
have bolted under any other master. They squeaked and 
grunted as in ordinary ; they sidled, they shuffled, they half 
stopped ; they turned an eye to all the little outlets of escape ; 
but in vain. There they stuck (for their very progress was a 
sort of sticking), charmed into the centre of his sphere of ac- 
tion, laying their heads together, but to no purpose ; looking 
all as if they were shrugging their shoulders, and eschewing 
the tip end of the whip of office. Much eye had they to their 
left leg ; shrewd backward glances ; not a little anticipative 
squeak, and sudden rush of avoidance. It was a superfluous 
clutter, and they felt it ; but a pig finds it more difficult than 
any other animal to accommodate himself to circumstances. 
Being out of his pale, he is in the highest state of wonderment 
and inaptitude. He is sluggish, obstinate, opinionate, not very 
social ; has no desire of seeing foreign parts. Think of him 
in a multitude, forced to travel, and wondering what the devil it 
is that drives him ! Judge by this of the talents of his driver. 

We beheld a man once, an inferior genius, inducting a pig into 
the other end of Long-lane, Smithfield. He had got him thus 
far towards the market. It was much. His air announced suc- 
cess in nine parts out of ten, and hope for the remainder. It 
had been a happy morning's work ; he had only to look for the 
termination of it ; and he looked (as a critic of an exalted turn 
of mind would say) in brightness and in joy. Then would he 
go to the public-house, and indulge in porter and a pleasing se- 
curity. Perhaps he would not say much at first, being oppressed 
with the greatness of his success ; but by degrees, especially if 



chap, ix.] THE GRACES OF PIG-DRIVING. 211 

interrogated, he would open, like ^Eneas, into all the circumstan- 
ces of his journey and the perils that beset him. Profound 
would be his set out ; full of tremor his middle course ; high 
and skilful his progress ; glorious, though with a quickened 
pulse, his triumphant entry. Delicate had been his situation in 
Duckingpond row ; masterly his turn at Bell-alley. We saw 
him with the radiance of some such thought on his countenance. 
He was just entering Long-lane. A gravity came upon him, 
as he steered his touchy convoy into this his last thoroughfare. 
A dog moved him into a little agitation, darting along ; but he 
resumed his course, not without a happy trepidation, hovering 
as he was on the borders of triumph. The pig still required 
care. It was evidently a pig with all the peculiar turn of mind 
of his species ; a fellow that would not move faster than he 
could help ; irritable ; retrospective ; picking objections, and 
prone to boggle ; a chap with a tendency to take every path but 
the proper one, and with a sidelong tact for the alleys. 

He bolts ! 

He's off! — Evasit ! erupit f 

" Oh !" exclaimed the man, dashing his hand against his head, 
lifting his knee in an agony, and screaming with all the weight 
of a prophecy which the spectators felt to be too true, " He'll go 
up all manner of streets /" 

Poor fellow ! we think of him now sometimes, driving up Duke- 
street, and not to be comforted in Barbican. 



212 THE COMPANION. [chap. x. 



CHAPTER X. 

Pantomimes. 

He that says he does not like a pantomime, either says what he 
does not think, or is not so wise as he fancies himself. He 
should grow young again and get wiser. " The child," as the 
poet says, " is father to the man ; " and in this instance he has 
a very degenerate offspring. Yes, John Tomkins, aged 35, 
and not liking pantomimes, is a very unpromising little boy. 
Consider, Tomkins, you have still a serious regard for pudding, 
and are ambitious of being thought clever. Well, there is the 
Clown who will sympathize with you in dumplings ; and not to 
see into the cleverness of Harlequin's quips and metamorpho- 
ses, is to want a perception, which other little boys have by na- 
ture. Not to like pantomimes, is not to like animal spirits ; it 
is not to like motion ; not to like love ; not to like a jest upon 
dulness and formality ; not to smoke one's uncle ; not to like to 
see a thump in the face ; not to laugh ; not to fancy ; not to 
like a holiday ; not to know the pleasure of sitting up at Christ- 
mas ; not to sympathize with one's children ; not to remember 
that we have been children ourselves \ nor that we shall grow 
old, and be as gouty as Pantaloon, if we are not as wise and as 
active as they. 

Not wishing to be dry on so pleasant a subject, we shall waive 
the learning that is in us on the origin of these popular enter- 
tainments. It will be sufficient to observe, that among the Ita- 
lians, from whom we borrowed them, they consisted of a run of 
jokes upon the provincial peculiarities of their countrymen. 
Harlequin, with his giddy vivacity, was the representative of 
the inhabitant of one state ; Pantaloon, of the imbecile careful- 
ness of another ; the Clown, of the sensual, macaroni-eating 
Neapolitan, with his instinct for eschewing danger; and Colum- 
bine, Harlequin's mistress, was the type, not indeed of the out- 



chap, x.] PANTOMIMES. 213 

ward woman (for the young ladies were too restrained in that 
matter), but of the inner girl of all the lasses in Italy, — the 
tender fluttering heart, — the turtle dove (colombina), ready to 
take flight with the first lover and pay off old scores with the 
gout and the jealousy, that had hitherto kept her in durance. 

The reader has only to transfer the characters to those of his 
own countrymen, to have a lively sense of the effect which these 
national pictures must have had in Italy. Imagine Harlequin, a 
gallant adventurer from some particular part of the land, full of 
life and fancy, sticking at no obstacles, leaping gates and win- 
dows, hitting off a satire at every turn, and converting the very 
scrapes he gets in, to matters of jest and triumph. The old gen- 
tleman that pursues him, is a miser from some manufacturing 
town, whose ward he has run away with. The Clown is a Lon- 
don cockney, with a prodigious eye to his own comfort and muf- 
fins, — a Lord Mayor's fool, who loved " everything that was 
good ;" and Columbine is the boarding-school girl, ripe for run- 
ning away with, and making a dance of it all the way from 
Chelsea to Gretna Green. 

Pantomime is the only upholder of comedy, when there is 
nothing else to show for it. It is the satirist, or caricaturist of 
the times, ridiculing the rise and fall of hats and funds, the 
growth of aldermen or of bonnets, the pretences of quackery ; 
and watching innovations of all sorts, lest change be too hasty. 
But this view of it is for the older boys. For us, who, upon the 
strength of our sympathy, boast of being among the young ones, 
its life, its motion, its animal spirits are the thing. We sit 
among the shining faces on all sides of us, and fancy ourselves 
at this moment enjoying it. What whim ! what fancy ! what 
eternal movement ! The performers are like the blood in one's 
veins, never still ; and the music runs with equal vivacity 
through the whole spectacle, like the pattern of a watered ribbon. 

In comes Harlequin, demi-masked, party-colored, nimble-toed, 
lithe, agile ; bending himself now this way, now that ; bridling 
up like a pigeon ; tipping out his toe like a dancer ; then taking 
a fantastic skip ; then standing ready at all points, and at right 
angles with his omnipotent lath-sword, the emblem of the con- 
verting power of fancy and light-heartedness. Giddy as we 



214 THE COMPANION. [chap. x. 

think him, he is resolved to show us that his head can bear more 
giddiness than we fancy ; and lo ! beginning with it by degrees, 
he whirls it round into a very spin, with no more remorse than 
if it were a button. Then he draws his sword, slaps his 
enemy, who has just come upon him, into a settee ; and spring- 
ing upon him, dashes through the window like a swallow. Let 
us hope that Columbine and the high road are on the other side, 
and that he is already a mile on the road to Gretna : for 

Here comes Pantaloon, with his stupid servant ; not the Clown, 
but a proper grave blockhead, to keep him in heart with him- 
self. What a hobbling old rascal it is ! How void of any 
handsome infirmity ! His very gout is owing to his having 
lived upon twopence farthing. Not finding Harlequin and Col- 
umbine, he sends his servant to look in the further part of the 
house, while he hobbles back to see what has become of that 
lazy fellow the Clown. 

He, the cunning rogue, who has been watching mid-way, and 
now sees the coast clear, enters in front, — round-faced, goggle- 
eyed, knock-kneed, but agile to a degree of the dislocated, with 
a great smear for his mouth, and a cap on his head, half fool's 
and half cook's. Commend him to the dinner that he sees on 
table, and that was laid for Harlequin and his mistress. Merry 
be their hearts : there is a time for all things ; and while they 
dance through a dozen inns to their hearts' content, he will eat 
a Sussex dumpling or so. Down he sits, contriving a luxurious 
seat, and inviting himself with as many ceremonies as if he had 
the whole day before him : but when he once begins, he seems 
as if he had not a moment to lose. The dumpling vanishes at a 
cram : — the sausages are abolished : — down go a dozen yards of 
macaroni : — and he is in the act of paying his duties to a gallon 
of rum, when in come Pantaloon and his servant at opposite 
doors, both in search of the glutton, both furious, and both re- 
solved to pounce on the rascal headlong. They rush forward 
accordingly ; he slips from between them with a " Hallo, I 
say ; " and the two poor devils dash their heads against one 
another, like rams. They rebound fainting asunder to the stage- 
doors : while the Clown, laughing with all his shoulders, nods a 
health to each, and finishes his draught. He then holds a great 



chap, x.q PANTOMIMES. 215 

cask of a snuff-box to each of their noses, to bring them to ; 
and while they are sneezing and tearing their souls out, jogs off 
at his leisure. 

Ah — here he is again on his road, Harlequin with his lass, 
fifty miles advanced in an hour, and caring nothing for his pur- 
suers, though they have taken the steam-coach. Now the 
lovers dine indeed ; and having had no motion to signify, join 
in a dance. Here Columbine shines as she ought to do. The 
little slender, but plump rogue ! How she winds it hither and 
thither with her trim waist, and her waxen arms ! now with a 
hand against her side, tripping it with no immodest insolence in 
a hornpipe; now undulating it in a waltz ; or " caracoling" it, 
as Sir Thomas Urquhart would say, in the saltatory style of the 
opera ; — but always Columbine ; always the little dove who is 
to be protected ; something less than the opera-dancer, and 
greater ; more unconscious, yet not so ; and ready to stretch 
her gauze wings for a flight, the moment Riches would tear her 
from Love. 

But these introductions to the characters by themselves do not 
give a sufficient idea of the great pervading spirit of the panto- 
mime, which is motion ; motion for ever, and motion all at once. 
Mr. Jacob Bryant, who saw everything in anything, and needed 
nothing but the taking a word to pieces to prove that his boots 
and the constellation Bootes were the same thing, would have 
recognized in the word Pantomime the Anglo-antediluvian com- 
pound, a Pant-o' -mimes ! that is to say, a set of Mimes or 
Mimics, all panting together. Or he would have detected the 
obvious Anglo-Greek meaning of a set of Mimes, expressing 
Pan, or Everything, by means of the Toe, — Pan-Toe-Mime. 
Be this as it may, Pantomime is certainly a representation of 
the vital principle of all things, from the dance of the planets 
down to that of Damon and Phillis. Everything in it keeps 
moving ; there is no more cessation than there is in nature ; and 
though we may endeavor to fix our attention upon one mover or 
set of movers at a time, we are conscious that all are going on. 
The Clown, though we do not see him, is jogging somewhere; — 
Pantaloon and his servant, like Saturn and his ring, are still 
careering it behind their Mercury and Venus ; and when Har- 



216 THE COMPANION. [chap. x. 

lequin and Columbine come in, do we fancy they have been 
resting behind the scenes ? The notion ! Look at them : they 
are evidently in full career: they have been, as well as are, 
dancing ; and the music, which never ceases whether they are 
visible or not, tells us as much. 

Let readers, of a solemn turn of mistake, disagree with us if 
they please, provided they are ill-humored. The erroneous, of 
a better nature, we are interested in ; having known what it is 
to err like them. These are apt to be mistaken out of modesty 
(sometimes out of a pardonable vanity in wishing to be esteem- 
ed) ; and in the case before us, they will sin against the natural 
candor of their hearts by condemning an entertainment which 
they enjoy, because they think it a mark of sense to do so. 
Let them know themselves to be wiser than those who are 
really of that opinion. There is nothing wiser than a cheerful 
pulse, and all innocent things which tend to keep it so. The 
crabbedest philosopher that ever lived (if he was a philosopher, 
and crabbed against his will) would have given thousands to feel 
as they do ; and he would have known, that it redounded to his 
honor and not to his disgrace, to own it. 



chap, xi.] CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. 217 



CHAPTER XL 

Cruelty to Children. 

Readers of newspapers are constantly being shocked with the 
unnatural conduct of parents towards their children. Some 
are detected in locking them up and half-starving them ; others 
tax them beyond their strength, and scourge them dreadfully for 
not bearing it; others take horrible dislikes to their children, 
and vex and torture them in every way they can think of, short 
of subjecting themselves to the gallows. In most cases the 
tyranny is of long duration before it is exposed. A whole 
neighborhood are saddened by the cries of the poor victim, till 
they are obliged to rise up in self-defence and bring the criminal 
to justice. By this we may judge how many miseries are taking 
place of which people have no suspicion ; how many wretches 
have crimes of this sort, to account for the evil in their looks ; 
and how many others, more criminal because more lying, go 
about in decent repute, while some oppressed and feeble relative, 
awfully patient, is awaiting in solitude the horror of the return- 
ing knock at the door. 

It is alleged by offenders of this description, that the children 
are vicious and provoking ; that their conduct is very " aggra- 
vating," as the phrase is ; and that u nothing can mend them 
but blows," — which never do. But whence come the faults of 
children? and how were they suffered to grow to such a height? 
Really,— setting aside these monsters of unpaternity, — parents 
are apt to demand a great many virtues in their children, which 
they do not themselves possess. The child, on the mere strength 
of their will, and without any of their experience, is expected 
to have good sense, good temper, and Heaven knows how many 
other good qualities ; while the parents perhaps, notwithstanding 
all the lessons they have received from time and trouble, have 



218 THE COMPANION. [chap. xi. 

little or nothing of any of them. Above all, they forget that, 
in originating the bodies of their children, they originate their 
minds and temperaments ; that a child is but a continuation of 
his father and mother, or their fathers and mothers, and kindred ; 
that it is further modified and made what it is by education and 
bringing up; and that on all these accounts the parents have no 
excuse for abusing and tormenting it ; unless with equal wis- 
dom and a glorious impartiality they should abuse and torment 
themselves in like manner, — scourge their own flesh, and con- 
demn themselves to a crust and a black hole. If a father were 
to give his own sore legs a good flogging for inheriting ill- 
humors from his ancestors, he might with some show of reason 
proceed to punish the continuation of them in those of his child. 
If a cruel mother got into a handsome tub of cold water of a 
winter morning, and edified the neighbors with the just and re- 
tributive shrieks which she thence poured forth for a couple of 
hours, crying out to her deceased " mammy" that she would be 
a good elderly woman in future, and not a scold and a repro- 
bate, then she might like a proper mad woman (for she is but 
an improper one now) put her child into the tub after her, and 
make it shriek out " mammy" in its turn. 

But let us do justice to all one's fellow-creatures, not for- 
getting these very " aggravating" parents. To regard them 
as something infernal, and forget that they, as well as their 
children, have become what they are from circumstances over 
which they had no control, is to fall into their own error, and 
forget our common humanity. We believe that the very worst 
of these domestic tyrants (and it is an awful lesson for the best 
of them) would have been shocked in early life, if they could 
have been shown, in the magic glass, what sort of beings they 
would become. Suppose one of them a young man, blooming 
with health, and not ill-natured, but subject to fits of sulkiness 
or passion, and not very wise ; and suppose that in this glass he 
sees an old ill-looking fellow, scowling, violent, outrageous, tor- 
menting with a bloody scourge his own child, who is meagre, 
squalid, and half-starved, — "Good God!" he would cry, "can 
that be myself? Can that be my arm, and my face ? And that 
my own poor little child? There are devils then and I am 



chap, xi.] CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. 219 

doomed to be one of them." And the tears would pour into his 
eyes. No : not so, poor wretch : thou art no devil — there is no 
such thing as devilishness or pure malice for its own sake ; the 
very cruellest actions are committed to relieve the cravings of 
the perpetrator's want of excitement, more than to hurt another. 
But though no devil, you are very ignorant, and are not aware 
of your ignorance. The energies of the universe, being on a 
great scale, are liable, in their progress from worse to better, to 
great roughness in the working, and appalling sounds of discord. 
The wiser you become, the more you diminish this jarring, and 
tend to produce that amelioration. Learn this, and be neither 
appalled nor appalling ; or if your reflections do not travel so far, 
and you are in no danger of continuing your evil course by the 
subtle desperations of superstition, be content to know, that 
nobody ill-treats another, who is satisfied with his own conduct. 
If the case were otherwise, it would be worse ; for you would 
not have the excuse even of a necessity for relieving your own 
sensations. But it never is so, sophisticate about it as you may. 
The very pains you take to reconcile yourself to yourself, may 
show you how much need you have of doing so. It is nothing 
else which makes the silliest little child sulky ; aad the same 
folly makes the grown man a tyrant. When you begin to ill- 
treat your child, you begin to punish in him your own faults ; 
and you most likely do nothing but beat them in upon him with 
every stroke of the scourge : for why should he be wiser than 
you? Why should he be able to throw off the ill-humors of 
which your greater energies cannot get rid ? 

These thoughts we address to those who are worthy of them ; 
and who not being tyrants, may yet become such, for want of 
reflection. Vulgar offenders can be mended only with the whole 
progress of society, and the advancement of education. There 
1 is one thing we must not omit to say, which is, that the best 
parents are apt to expect too much of their children, and to for- 
get how much error they may have committed in the course of 
bringing them up. Nobody is in fault, in a criminal sense. 
Children have their excuses, and parents have their excuses ; 
but the wiser any .of us become, the less we exact from others, 
and the more we do to deserve their regard. The great art of 



220 THE COMPANION. [chap. xi. 

being a good parent consists in setting a good example, and in 
maintaining that union of dispassionate firmness with habitual 
good-humor, which a child never thinks of treating with disre- 
spect. 

We have here been speaking principally of the behavior of 
parents to little children. When violent disputes take place be- 
tween parents and children grown up, — young men and women, 
— there are generally great faults on both sides ; though, for an 
obvious reason, the parent, who has had the training and forma- 
tion of the other, is likely to be most in the wrong. But un- 
happily, very excellent people may sometimes find themselves 
hampered in a calamity of this nature ; and out of that sort of 
weakness which is so often confounded with strength, turn their 
very sense of being in the right, to the same hostile and implaca- 
ble purpose as if it were the reverse. We can only say, that 
from all we have seen in the world, and indeed from the whole 
experience of mankind, they who are conscious of being right, 
are the first to make a movement towards reconciliation, let the 
cause of quarrel be what it may ; and that there is no surer 
method, in the eyes of any who know what human nature is, 
both to sustain the real dignity of the right side, and to amend 
the wrong one. To kind-hearted fathers in general, who have 
the misfortune to get into a dilemma of this sort, we would re- 
commend the pathetic story of a French general, who was ob- 
served, after the death of his son in battle, never to hold up his 
head. He said to a friend, " My boy was used to think me 
severe ; and he had too much reason to do so. He did not know 
how I loved him at the bottom of my heart ; and it is now too 
late." 



chap, xii.] HOUSES ON FIRE. 221 



CHAPTER XII. 

Houses on Fire. 

It is astonishing how little imagination there is in the world, in 
matters not affecting men's immediate wants and importance. 
People seem to require a million thumps on the head, before 
they can learn to guard against a head-ache. This would be 
little ; but the greater the calamity, the less they seem to pro- 
vide against it. All the fires in this great metropolis, and the 
frightful catastrophes which are often the result, do not show the 
inhabitants that they ought to take measures to guard against 
them, and that these measures are among the easiest things in 
the world. Every man who has a family, and whose house is 
too high to allow of jumping out of the windows, ought to con- 
sider himself hound to have a fire-escape. What signifies all the 
care he has taken to be a good husband or father, and all the 
provision he has made for the well-being of his children in after- 
life, if, in one frightful moment, in the dead of night, with horror 
glaring in their faces, and tender and despairing words swallowed 
up in burning and suffocation, — amidst cracking beams and 
rafters, sinking floors, and a whole yielding gulf of agony, — they 
are all to cease to be ! — to perish like so many vermin in a wall ! 
Fire-escapes, even if they are not made so already (as we believe 
they are), can evidently be constructed in a most easy, cheap, 
and commodious manner. A basket and a double rope are suf- 
ficient ; or two or three would be better. It is the sudden sense 
of the height at which people sleep, and the despair of escape 
which consequently seizes them, for want of some such provision, 
that disables them from thinking of any other resources. Houses, 
it is true, generally have trap-doors to the roof; but these are 
not kept in readiness for use ; a ladder is wanting ; or the door is 
hard to be got up ; the passage to it is difficult, or involved in 
the fire \ and the roof may not be a safe one to walk over ; chil- 



222 THE COMPANION. [chap xn. 

dren cannot act for themselves ; terror affects the older people ; 
and therefore, on all these accounts, nothing is more desirable 
than that the means of escape should be at hand, should be facile, 
and capable of being used in concert with the multitude below. 
People out of doors are ever ready and anxious to assist. Those 
brave fellows, the firemen, would complete the task, if time 
allowed, and circumstances had hitherto prevented it ; and han- 
dle the basket and the little riders in it, with confidence, like so 
many chickens. A time, perhaps, will come, when every win- 
dow in a high bed-chamber will have an escape to it, as a matter 
of course ; but it is a terrible pity, meanwhile, that for want of a 
little imagination out of the common pale of their Mondays and 
Wednesdays, a whole metropolis, piquing themselves on their love 
of their families, should subject themselves and the dearest 
objects of their affection to these infernal accidents. 

In an honest state of society, houses would all communicate 
with one another by common doors ; and families destroyed by 
fire would be among the monstrosities of history. 



chap, xiii.] MILITARY INSECTS. 223 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A Battle of Ants.— Desirableness of Drawing a Distinction between Powers 
common to other Animals, and those peculiar to Man. 

Taking up, the other day, a number of the Edinburgh Journal 
of Science, we met with the following account of a battle of ants. 
It is contained in the notice of a memoir by M. Hanhart, who 
describes the battle as having taken place between two species 
of these insects, " one the formica rufa, and the other a little 
black ant, which he does not name (probably the fofusca)." In 
other respects, as the reviewer observes, the subject is not new, 
the celebrated Huber having described a battle of this kind be- 
fore ; but as natural history lies out of the way of many readers 
(though calculated to please them all, if they are genuine readers 
of anything), and as it has suggested to us a few remarks which 
may further the objects we have in writing, the account shall be 
here repeated. 

" M. Hanhart saw these insects approach in armies composed 
of their respective swarms, and advancing towards each other in 
the greatest order. The Formica rufa marched with one in front, 
on a line from nine to twelve feet in length, flanked by several 
corps in square masses, composed of from twenty to sixty indi- 
viduals. 

" The second species (little blacks), forming an army much 
more numerous, marched to meet the enemy on a very extended 
line, and from one to three individuals abreast. They left a 
detachment at the foot of their hillock to defend it against any 
unlooked-for attack. The rest of the army marched to battle, 
with its right wing supported by a solid corps of several hun- 
dred individuals, and the left wing supported by a similar body 
of more than a thousand. These groups advanced in the great- 
est order, and without changing their positions. The two lateral 



224 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiii. 

corps took no part in the present action. That of the right wing 
made a halt, and formed an army of reserve ; whilst the corps 
which marched in column on the left wing, manoeuvred so as to 
turn the hostile army, and advanced with a hurried march to 
the hillock of the Formica rufa, and took it by assault. 

" The two armies attacked each other, and fought for a long 
time, without breaking their lines. At length disorder appeared 
in various points, and the combat was maintained in detached 
groups ; and, after a bloody battle, which continued from three 
to four hours, the Formica rufa were put to flight, and forced to 
abandon their two hillocks and go off to establish themselves at 
some other point with the remains of their army. 

" The most interesting part of this exhibition, says M. Han- 
•hart, was to see these insects reciprocally making prisoners, and 
transporting their own wounded to their hillocks. Their de- 
votedness to the wounded was carried so far, that the Formica 
rufa, in conveying them to their nests, allowed themselves to be 
killed by the little blacks without any resistance, rather than 
abandon their precious charge. 

" From the observations of M. Huber, it is known that when 
an ant hillock is taken by the enemy, the vanquished are reduced 
to slavery, and employed in the interior labors of their habita- 
tion." — Bull. Univ., Mai, 1826. 

There is no sort of reason, observe, to mistrust these accounts. 
The " lords of creation" may be slow in admitting the ap- 
proaches of other animals to a common property in what they 
consider eminently human and skilful ; but ants, in some of 
their habits, have a great resemblance to bees ; and after what 
is now universally known respecting the polity and behavior of 
the bees, the doubt will rather be, whether a share in the arts of 
war and government is not possessed by a far greater number of 
beings than we have yet discovered. 

Here then, among a set of little creatures not bigger than 
grains of rice, is war in its regular human shape ; war, not only 
in its violence, but its patriotism or fellow-feeling ; and not only 
in its patriotism (which, in our summary mode of settling all 
creatures' affections but our own, might be referred to instinct), 
but war in its science and battle array ! The red ants make 



chap, xiii.] MILITARY INSECTS. 225 

their advance in a line from nine to twelve feet in length, flanked 
by several corps in square masses ; the " little blacks," more 
numerous, come up three abreast, leaving a detachment at the 
foot of their hillock to defend against unlooked-for attack. There 
are wings right and left ; they halt ; they form an army of 
reserve ; one side manoeuvres so as to turn the other ; the hillock 
is taken by assault ; the lines are broken ; and in fine, after a 
" bloody battle " of three or four hours, the red ants are put 
to flight. 

What is there different in all this from a battle of Waterloo or 
Malplaquet? We look down upon these little energetic and 
skilful creatures, as beings of a similar disproportion might look 
upon us ; and do we not laugh ? W^e may for an instant, — 
thinking of the little Wellingtons and Napoleons that may have 
led them ; but such laughter is found to be wrong on reflection, 
and is left to those who do not reflect at all, and who would be 
the first to resent laughter against themselves. 

What then do we do ? Are we to go into a corner, and effemi- 
nately weep over the miseries of the formican, as well as the 
human, race ? saying, how short is the life of ant ! and that 
Fourmis cometh up, and is cut down like a Frenchman 1 By no 
means. But we may contribute, by our reflections, an atom to 
the sum of human advancement ; and if men advance, all the 
creatures of this world, for aught we know, may advance with 
them, or the places in which evil is found be diminished. 

A little before we read this account of the battle of the ants, 
we saw pass by our window a troop of horse ; a set of gallant 
fellows, on animals almost as noble ; the band playing and colors 
flying ; a strenuous sight ; a progress of human hearts and thick- 
coming, trampling hoofs ; a crowd of wills, composed into order 
and beauty by the will of another ; ready death in the most gal- 
lant shape of life ; self-sacrifice taking out its holiday of admi- 
ration in the eyes of the feeble and the heroical, and moving 
through the sunshine to sounds of music, as if one moment of the 
very show of sympathy were worth any price, even to its own 
confusion. 

Was it all this ? or was it nothing but a set of more imposing 
animals, led by others about half as thoughtless ? Was it an 
16 



226 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiii. 

imposition on themselves as well as the public, enticing the poor 
souls tQ be dressed up for the slaughter ? a mass of superfluous 
human beings, cheated to come together, in order, as Mr. Malthus 
thinks, that the superfluity may be got rid of, and the great have 
elbow-room at their feasts ? or was it simply, as other philoso- 
phers think, because human experience is still in its boyhood, 
and men, in some respects, are not yet heyond the ants ? 

The sight of one of these military shows is, to us, the most 
elevating and the most humiliating thing in the world. It seems 
at once to raise us to the gods, and to sink us to the brutes. 
We feel of what noble things men are capable, and into what 
half-witted things they may be deluded. At one moment we 
seem to ride in company with them to some glorious achieve- 
ment, and rejoice in constituting a part of all that strength and 
warm blood which is to be let out for some great cause. At the 
next, they appear to us a parcel of poor fools tricked, and trick- 
ed out ; and we, because we are poorer ones, who see without 
being able to help it, must fain have the feeble tears come in 
our eyes. Oh! in that sorry little looking-glass of a tear, how 
many great human shows have been reflected, and made less ! 

But these weaknesses belong to the physical part of us. Phi- 
losophy sees further, and hopes all. That war is an unmixed 
evil, we do not believe. We are sure it is otherwise. It sets in 
motion many noble qualities, and (in default of a better instru- 
ment) often does a great deal of good. That it is not, at the same 
time, a great and monstrous evil, we believe as little. One 
field, after a battle, with the cries of the wounded and the dying, 
the dislocations, the tortures, the defeatures, and the dismember- 
ings, the dreadful lingering (perhaps on a winter's night), the 
shrieks for help, and the agonies of mortal thirst, — is sufficient to 
do away all shallow and blustering attempts to make us take the 
show of it for the substance. Even if we had no hope that the 
world could ever get rid of war, we should not blind ourselves to 
this its ghastly side ; for its evils would then accumulate for 
want of being considered ; and it is better at all times to look a 
truth manfully in the face, than trust for security ourselves, or 
credulity from others, to an effeminate hiding of our eyes. But 
the same love of truth that disguises nothing, may hope every- 



chap, xiii.] MILITARY INSECTS. 227 

thing ; and it is this that shall carry the world forward to bene- 
fits unthought of, if men of genius once come to set it up as 
their guide and standard. 

What we intended by our present article was this : to suggest, 
whether wc ought to value ourselves on any custom or skill 
which we possess in common v/ith the lower animals ; or 
whether we ought not rather to consider the participation as an 
argument, that, in that respect, we have not yet got beyond the 
commonest instinct. If the military conduct of the ants be not 
instinct (or whatsoever human pride pleases to understand by that 
term), then are they in possession, so far, of human reason, and 
so far we do not see beyond them. If it be instinct, then war, 
and the conduct of it, are not the great things we suppose them ; 
and a Wellington and a Washington may but follow the impulse 
of some mechanical energy, just as some insects are supposed to 
construct their dwellings in a particular shape, because they 
partake of it in their own conformation. In either case, we con- 
ceive, we ought to remind ourselves, that the greatest distinction 
hitherto discovered between men and other creatures is, that the 
numan being is capable of improvement, and of seeing beyond 
the instincts common to all. Therefore, war is not a thing we 
arrive at after great improvement ; it is a thing we begin with, 
before any ; and what we take for improvements in the mode of 
conducting it, are only the result of such circumstances as can 
be turned to account by creatures no higher in the scale of be- 
ing than insects. 

We make very disingenuous use of the lower animals, in our 
reasonings and analogies. If we wish to degrade a man, we say 
he acts like a brute ; — if, on the other hand, we would vindicate 
any part of our conduct as especially natural and proper, we 
say the very brutes do it. Now, in one sense of the word, eve- 
rything is natural which takes place within the whole circle of 
nature : and being animals ourselves, we partake of much that 
is common to all animals. But. if we are to pique ourselves on 
our superiority, it is evident that we are superior in proportion 
as we are rationally and deliberately different from the animals 
beneath us ; while they, on the other hand, have a right to share 



228 THE COMPANION. [chap.xiii. 

our " glory," or to pull it down, according to the degrees in 
which they resemble us. 

The conclusion is, that we ought attentively to consider in 
what points the resemblance is to be found, and in what we 
leave them manifestly behind. Creatures who differ from our- 
selves may, it is true, have perceptions of which we are incapa- 
ble, perhaps nobler ones ; but this is a mere assumption : we can 
only reason from what we know ; and it is to be presumed, that 
they are as inferior to us in all which we reckon intellectual and 
capable of advancement, as they are known to be so in gen- 
eral by their subjection to our uses, by the helps which we 
can afford them, by the mistakes they make, the points at which 
they stop short, and the manner in which we can put to flight 
their faculties, and whole myriads of them. 

What faculties then have beasts and insects in common with 
us ? What can they do, that we do also ? — Let us see. Bea- 
vers can build houses, and insects of various sorts can build 
cells. Birds also construct themselves dwelling-places suitable 
to their nature. The orang-outang can be taught to put on 
clothes ; he can sit up and take his wine at dinner ; and the 
squirrel can play his part in a dessert, as far as the cracking of 
nuts. Animals, in general, love personal cleanliness, and eat 
no more than is fit for them, but can be encouraged into great 
sensuality. Bees have a monarchical government : foxes un- 
derstand trick and stratagems ; so do hundreds of other animals, 
from the dog down to the dunghill-beetle ; many are capable of 
pride and emulation, more of attachment, and all of fear, of an- 
ger, of hostility, or other impulses for self-defence ; and all per- 
haps are susceptible of improvement from without ; that is to say, 
by the help of man. Seals will look on while their young ones 
fight, and pat and caress the conqueror ; and now it is discov- 
ered that ants can conduct armies to battle, can make and res- 
cue prisoners, and turn them to account. Huber, in addition to 
these discoveries, found out that they possessed a sort of cattle 
in a species of aphides, and that they made them yield a secre- 
tion for food, as we obtain milk from the cows. It appears to 
be almost equally proved, that animals have modes of communi- 
cating with one another, analogous to speech. Insects are sup- 



chap, xiii.] MILITARY INSECTS. 229 

posed to interchange a kind of dumb language, — to talk, as it 
were, with fingers, — by means of their antenna ; and it is diffi- 
cult to believe, that in the songs of birds there is not both speech 
and inflection, communications in the gross, and expressions 
modified by the occasion. 

Let the reader, however, as becomes his philosophy, take from 
all this whatever is superfluous or conjectural, and enough will 
remain to show, that the least and lowest animals, as well as man, 
can furnish themselves with dwellings ; can procure food ; can 
trick and deceive ; are naturally clean and temperate, but can 
taught to indulge their senses; have the ordinary round of 
passions ; encourage the qualities necessary to vigor and self- 
defence ; have polity and kingly government ; can make other 
animals of use to them ; and, finally, can make war, and con- 
duct armies to battle in the most striking mode of human 
strategy. 

Animals in general, therefore, include among themselves 

Masons, or house-builders ; 

Getters of bread ; 

Common followers of the senses ; 

Common-place imitators ; 

Pursuers of their own interest, in cunning as well as in 

simplicity ; 
Possessors of the natural affections ; 
Encouragers of valor and self-exertion ; 
Monarchs and subjects ; 
Warriors, and leaders to battle. 

Whatever, among men, is reducible to any of these classes, 
is to be found among beasts, birds, and insects. We are not 
to be ashamed of anything we have in common with them, 
merely because we so have it. On the contrary, we are to be 
glad that any quality, useful or noble, is so universal in the crea- 
tion. But whatever we discern among them, of sordid or selfish, 
there, without condemning them, we may see the line drawn, be- 
yond we can alone congratulate ourselves on our humanity ; 
and whatever skill they possess in common with us, there we are 



230 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiii. 

to begin to doubt whether we have any reason to pique ourselves 
on our display of it, and from that limit we are to begin to con- 
sider what they do not possess. 

We have often had a suspicion, that military talent is greatly 
overrated by the world, and for an obvious reason ; because the 
means by which it shows itself are connected with brute force 
and the most terrible results ; and men's faculties are dazzled 
and beaten down by a thunder and lightning so formidable to 
their very existence. If playing a game of chess involved the 
the blowing up of gunpowder and the hazard of laying waste a 
city, men would have the same grand idea of a game at chess ; 
and yet we now give it no more glory than it deserves. Now 
it is doubtful, whether the greatest military conqueror, consider- 
ed purely as such, and not with reference to his accidental pos- 
session of other talents, such as those of Caesar and Xenophon, 
is not a mere chess-player of this description, with the addition 
of greater self-possession. His main faculty is of the geometri- 
cal or proportion-giving order ; of which it is remarkable, that 
it is the only one, ranking high among those of humanity, which 
is partaken by the lowest ignorance and what is called pure in- 
stinct ; by arithmetical idiots, and architectural bees. Idiots 
have been known to solve difficult arithmetical questions, by 
taking a thought which they could do for no other purpose ; that 
is to say, by reference to some undiscovered faculty within 
them, that looks very like an instinct, and the result of the pre- 
sence or absence of something, which is not common to higher 
organisation. In Jameson's Philosophical Journal for April,* is 
a conjecture, that the hexagonal plan of the cells of a hornet is 
derived from the structure of its fore-legs. It has often struck us, 
that the architecture of the cells of bees might be owing to simi- 
lar guidance of conformation ; and by the like analogy, extraor- 
dinary powers of arithmetic might be traceable to some physical 
peculiarity, or a tendency to it ; such as the indication of a sixth 

* See the Magazine of Natural History for July, a work lately set up. 
We beg leave to recommend this, and all similar works, to the lovers of 
truth and inquiry in general ; physical discovery having greater alliance 
with moral than is suspected, and the habit of sincere investigation on all 
points being greatly encouraged by its existence on any one. 



[chap, xiii.] MILITARY INSECTS. 231 

finger on the hands of one of the calculating boys that were 
lately so much talked of. We have sometimes thought, that 
even the illustrious Newton had a face and a set of features sin- 
gularly accordant with mathematical uniformity and precision. 
And there is a professional cast of countenance attributed, not 
perhaps without reason, to warriors of the more mechanical or- 
der. Washington's face was as cut and dry as a diagram. 

It may be argued, that whatever proofs may exist of the ac- 
quaintance of insects with the art of war, or at least with their 
power of joining battle under the ordinary appearances of skill and 
science, it does not follow that they conduct the matter with the 
real science of human beings, or that they are acquainted with. 
our variety of tactics, or have made improvements in them from 
time to time. We concede that in all probability there is a dis- 
tinction between the exercise of the most rational-looking in- 
stincts on the part of a lower animal, and the most instinctive- 
looking reason on the side of man ; but where the two classes 
have so much in common in any one particular, what we mean 
to show is, that in that particular it is more difficr.lt than in 
others to pronounce where the limit between conscious and uncon- 
scious skill is to be drawn ; and that so far, we have no pretension 
which other animals may not dispute with us. It has been often 
wandered, that a great general is not in other respects a man 
above the vulgar ; that he is not a better speaker than others ; 
a better writer, or thinker, or possessed of greater address ; in 
short, that he has no qualities but such as are essential to him 
in his military capacity. This again looks like a proof of the 
mechanical nature of a general's ability. We believe it may 
be said exclusively of military talents, and of one or two others 
connected with the mathematics, that they are the only ones 
capable of attaining to greatness and celebrity in their respec- 
tive departments with a destitution of taste or knowledge in eve- 
ry other. Every other great talent partakes more or less of a 
sympathy with greatness in other shapes. The fine arts have 
their harmonies in common : wit implies a stock of ideas : the 
legislator — (we do not mean the ordinary conductors of govern- 
ment, for they, as one of them said, require much less wisdom 
than the world supposes ; and it may be added, impose upon the 



232 THE COMPANION. [chap xiii. 

world, somewhat in the same manner as military leaders, by dint 
of the size and potency of their operations) — the legislator 
makes a profound study of all the wants of mankind ; and poe- 
try and philosophy show the height at which they live, by " look- 
ing abroad into universality." 

Far be it from us to undervalue the use of any science, espe- 
cially in the hands of those who are capable of so looking 
abroad, and seeing where it can advance the good of the com- 
munity. The commonest genuine soldier has a merit in his 
way, which we are far from disesteeming. Without a portion of 
his fortitude, no man has a power to be useful. But we are 
speaking of intellects capable of leading society onwards, and 
not of instruments however respectable : and unfortunately 
(generally speaking) the greatest soldiers are fit only to be in- 
struments, not leaders. Once in a way it happens luckily that 
they suit the times they live in. Washington is an instance : 
and yet if ever great man looked like " a tool in the hands of 
Providence," it was he. He appears to have been always the 
same man, from first to last, employed or unemployed, known 
or unknown ; — the same steady, dry-looking, determined per- 
son, cut and carved like a piece of ebony, for the genius of the 
times to rule with. Before the work was begun, there ho was, 
a sort of born patriarchal staff, governing herds and slaves ; 
and when the work was over, he was found in his old place, with 
the same carved countenance and the same stiff inflexibility, 
governing still. And his slaves were found with him. This is 
what a soldier ought to be. Not indeed if the world were to 
advance by their means, and theirs only ; but that is impossible. 
Washington was only the sword with which Franklin and the 
spirit of revolution worked out their purposes ; and a sword 
should be nothing but a sword. The moment soldiers come to 
direct the intellect of their age, they make a sorry business of 
it. Napoleon himself did. Frederick did. Even Csesar failed. 
As to Alfred the Great, he was not so much a general fighting 
with generals as a universal genius warring with barbarism 
and adversity ; and it took a load of sorrow to make even him 
the demigod he was. 

" Stand upon the ancient ways," says Bacon, " and see what 



chap, xiii 1 MILITARY INSECTS. 233 



steps may be taken for progression." Look, for the same pur- 
pose (it may be said) upon the rest of the animal creation, and 
consider the qualities in which they have no share with you. 
Of the others, you may well doubt the greatness, considered as 
movers, and not instruments, towards progression. It is among 
the remainder you must seek for the advancement of your spe- 
cies. An insect can be a provider of the necessaries of life, 
and he can exercise power and organize violence. He can be 
a builder ; he can be a soldier ; he can be a king. But to all 
appearance, he is the same as he was ever, and his works perish 
with him. If insects have such and such an establishment 
among them, we conceive they will have it always, unless men 
alter it for them. If they have no such establishment, they ap- 
pear of themselves incapable of admitting it. It is men only 
that add and improve. Men only can bequeathe their souls for 
the benefit of posterity, in the shape of arts and books. Men 
only can philosophize, and reform, and cast off old customs, and 
take steps for laying the whole globe nearer to the sun of wis- 
dom and happiness : and in proportion as you find them capable 
of so hoping and so working, you recognize their superiority to 
the brutes that perish. 



234 THE COMPANION, [chap. xiv. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A Walk from Dulwich to Brockham, 

IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND. 

With an Original Circumstance or two respecting Dr. Johnson. 

Dear Sir, 

As other calls upon, my pilgrimage in this world have inter- 
rupted those weekly voyages of discovery into green lanes and 
rustic houses of entertainment which you and I had so agreea- 
bly commenced, I thought I could not do better than make you 
partaker of my new journey, as far as pen and paper could do 
it. You are therefore to look upon yourself as having resolved 
to take a walk of twenty or thirty miles into Surrey without 
knowing anything of the matter. You will have set out with 
us a fortnight ago, and will be kind enough to take your busts 
for chambermaids, and your music (which is not so easy) for 
the voices of stage-coachmen. 

Illness, you know, does not hinder me from walking ; neither 
does anxiety. On the contrary, the more I walk, the better and 
stouter I become ; and I believe if everybody were to regard the 
restlessness which anxiety creates, as a signal from nature to 
get up and contend with it in that manner, people would find the 
benefit of it. This is more particularly the case if they are 
lovers of Nature, as well as pupils of her, and have an eye for 
the beauties in which her visible world abounds ; and as I may 
claim the merit of loving her heartily, and even of tracing my 
sufferings (when I have them) to her cause, the latter are never 
so great but she repays me with some sense of sweetness, and 
leaves me a certain property in the delight of others, when I 
have little of my own. 

" O that I had the wings of a dove !" said the royal poet ; 



chap xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 235 

" then would I fly away and be at rest." I believe there are 
few persons, who having felt sorrow, and anticipating a journey 
not exactly towards it, have not partaken of this sense of the 
desirability of remoteness. A great deal of what we love in 
poetry is founded upon it ; nor do any feel it with more passion, 
than those whose sense of duty to their fellow-creatures will 
not allow them to regard retirement as anything but a refresh- 
ment between their tasks, and as a wealth of which all ought 
to partake. 

But David sighed for remoteness, and not for solitude. At 
least, if he did, the cares of the moment must have greatly 
overbalanced the habits of the poet. Neither doves nor poets 
can very well do without a companion. Be that as it may, the 
writer of this epistle, who is a still greater lover of companion- 
ship than poetry (and he cannot express his liking more strongly), 
had not the misfortune, on the present occasion, of being com- 
pelled to do without it ; and as to remoteness, though his pil- 
grimage was to extend little beyond twenty miles, he had not 
the less sense of it on that account. Remoteness is not how far 
you go in point of ground, but how far you feel yourself from 
your common-places, Literal distance is indeed necessary in 
some degree ; but the quantity of it depends on imagination and 
the nature of circumstances. The poet who can take to his 
wings like a dove, and plunge into the wood nearest him, is far- 
ther off, millions of miles, in the retreat of his thoughts, than 
the literalist, who must get to Johnny Groat's in order to con- 
vince himself that he is not in Edinburgh. 

Almost any companion would do, if we could not make our 
choice, provided it loved us and was sincere. A horse is good 
company, if you have no other ; a dog still better. I have often 
thought, that I could take a child by the hand, and walk with it 
day after day towards the north or the east, a straight road, feel- 
ing as if it would lead into another world, 

" And think 'twould lead to some bright isle of rest." 
But I should have to go back, to fetch some grown friends. 

There were three of us on the present occasion, grown and 
young. We began by taking the Dulwich stage from a house 
in Fleet-street, where a drunken man came into the tap, and 



238 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

was very pious. He recited hymns ; asked the landlady to 
shake hands with him ; was for making a sofa of the counter, 
which she prevented by thrusting his leg off with some indigna- 
tion ; and being hindered in this piece of jollity, he sank on his 
knees to pray. He was too good-natured for a Methodist ; so 
had taken to stiff glasses of brandy-and- water, 

" To help him to support uneasy steps 
Over the burning marie." 

He said he had been " twice through the gates of hell ;" and 
by his drinking, poor fellow, he seemed to be setting out on his 
third adventure. We called him Sin-had. By the way, when 
you were a boy, did you not think that the name of Sindbad was 
allegorical, and meant a man who had sinned very badly ? 
Does not every little boy think so ? One does not indeed, at 
that time of life, know very well what to make of the porter 
Hindbad, who rhymes to him ; and I remember I was not pleased 
when I came to find out that Hind and Sind were component 
words, and meant Eastern and Western. 

The stage took us to the Greyhound at Dulwich, where, though 
we had come from another village almost as far off from Lon- 
don on the northern side, we felt as if we had newly got into 
the country, and ate a hearty supper accordingly. This was a 
thing not usual with us ; but then everybody eats " in the coun- 
try ; " — there is " the air ; " and besides, we had eaten little 
dinner, and were merrier, and "remote." On looking out of 
our chamber window in the morning, we remarked that the situ- 
ation of the inn was beautiful, even towards the road, the place 
is so rich with trees ; and returning to the room in which we had 
supped, we found with pleasure that we had a window there, 
presenting us with a peep into rich meadows, where the hay- 
makers were at work in their white shirts. A sunny room, 
quiet, our remote five miles, and a pleasant subject (the Poetry 
of British Ladies), enabled the editorial part of us to go comforta- 
bly to our morning's task ; after which we left the inn to pro- 
ceed on our journey. We had not seen Dulwich for many 
years, and were surprised to find it still so full of trees. It 
continues, at least in the quarter through which we passed, to 
deserve the recommendation given it by Armstrong, of 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 237 

" Dulwich, yet unspoil'd by art." 



He would have added, had he lived, now that art had come, 
even to make it better. It was with real pain, that two lovers 
of painting were obliged to coast the walls of the college with- 
out seeing the gallery ; but we have vowed a pilgrimage very 
shortly to those remoter places, there to be found ; to wit, the 
landscapes of Claude and Cuyp, and the houses of Rembrandt ; 
and we shall make report of it, to save our character. We 
know not whether it was the sultriness of the day, with occasional 
heavy clouds, but we thought the air of Dulwich too warm, and 
pronounced it a place of sleepy luxuriance. So it appeared to 
us that morning; beautiful, however, and "remote; 5 ' and the 
thought of old Allen, Shakspeare's playmate, made it still 
more so, 

I remember, in my boyhood, seeing Sir Francis Bourgeois 
(the bequeather of the Dulwich pictures) in company with Mr. 
West, in the latter's gallery in Newman-street. He was in 
buckskins and boots, dandy dress of that time, and appeared a 
lively,, good-natured man, with a pleasing countenance, proba- 
bly because he said something pleasant of myself ; he confirmed 
it with an oath, which startled, but did not alter this opinion. 
Ever afterwards I had an inclination to like his pictures, which 
I believe were not very good ; and unfortunately, with whatever 
gravity he might paint, his oath and his buckskins would never 
allow me to consider him a serious person ; so that it somewhat 
surprised me to hear that M. Desenfans had bequeathed him his 
gallery out of pure regard ; and still more that Sir Francis, 
when he died, had ordered his own remains to be gathered to 
those of his benefactor and Madame Desenfans, and all three 
buried in the society of the pictures they loved. For the first 
time, I began to think that his pictures must have contained 
more than was found in them, and that I had done wrong (as it 
is customary to do) to the gaiety of his manners. If there was 
vanity in the bequest, as some have thought, it was at least a 
vanity accompanied with touching circumstances and an appear- 
ance of a very social taste ; and as most people have their vani- 
ties, it might be as well for them to think what sort of accom- 



238 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

paniments exalt or degrade theirs, or render them purely dull 
and selfish. As to the Gallery's being " out of the way, 55 espe- 
cially for students, I am of a different opinion, and for two rea- 
sons : first, that no gallery, whether in or out of the way, can 
ever produce great artists, nature, and perhaps the very want 
of a gallery, always settling that matter before galleries are 
thought of; and, second, because in going to see the pictures in 
a beautiful country village, people get out of their town com- 
mon-places, and are better prepared for the perception of other 
beauties, and of the nature that makes them all. Besides, there 
is probably something to pay on a jaunt of this kind, and yet 
of a different sort from payments at a door. There is no illibe- 
ral demand at Dulwich for a liberal pleasure ; but then " the 
inn 55 is inviting ; people eat and drink, and get social ; and the 
warmth which dinner and a glass diffuses, helps them to rejoice 
doubly in the warmth of the sunshine and the pictures, and in 
the fame of the great and generous. 

Leaving Dulwich for Norwood (where we rejoiced to hear 
that some of our old friends the Gipsies were still extant), we 
found the air very refreshing as we ascended towards the church 
of the latter village. It is one of the dandy modern churches 
(for they deserve no better name) standing on an open hill, as 
if to be admired. It is pleasant to see churches instead of Me- 
thodist chapels, because any moderate religion has more of real 
Christianity in it, than contumelious opinions of God and the next 
world ; but there is a want of taste, of every sort, in these new 
churches. They are not picturesque, like the old ones ; they 
are not humble ; they are not, what they are so often miscalled, 
classical. A barn is a more classical building than a church 
with a fantastic steeple to it. In fact, a barn is of the genuine 
classical shape, and only wants a stone covering, and pillars 
about it, to become a temple of Theseus. The classical shape 
is the shape of simple utility and beauty. Sometimes we see it 
in the body of the modern church ; but then a steeple must be 
put on it : the artist must have something of his own ; and hav- 
ing, in fact, nothing of his own, he first puts a bit of a steeple, 
which he thinks will not be enough, then another bit, and then 
another ; adds another fantastic ornament here and there to his 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 239 

building, by way of rim or " border, like;" and so, having put 
his pepper-box over his pillars, and his pillars over his pepper- 
box, he pretends he has done a grand thing, while he knows very 
well that he has only been perplexed, and a bricklayer. 

For a village, the old picturesque church is the proper thing, 
with its tower and its trees, as at Hendon and Finchley ; or its 
spire, as at Beckenham. Classical beauty is one thing, Gothic 
or Saxon beauty is another ; quite as genuine in its way, and in 
this instance more suitable. It has been well observed, that what 
is called classical architecture, though of older date than the 
Gothic, really does not look so old — does not so well convey the 
sentiment of antiquity ; that is to say, the ideal associations of 
this world, however ancient, are far surpassed in the reach of 
ages by those of religion, and the patriarchs and another world ; 
not to mention that we have been used to identify them with the 
visible old age of our parents and kindred ; and that Greek and 
Roman architecture, in its smoothness and polish, has an unfad- 
ing look of youth. It might be thought that the erection of new 
churches on the classical principle (taking it for granted that 
they remind us more of Greek and Roman temples, than of their 
own absurdity) would be favorable to the growth of liberality ; 
that, at least, liberality would not be opposed by it ; whereas the 
preservation of the old style might tend to keep up old notions. 
We do not think so, except inasmuch as the old notions would 
not be unfavorable to the new. New opinions ought to be made 
to grow as kindly as possible out of old ones, and should pre- 
serve all that they contain of the affectionate and truly venera- 
ble. We could fancy the most liberal doctrines preached five 
hundred years hence in churches precisely like those of our an- 
cestors, and their old dust ready to blossom into delight at the 
arrival of true Christianity. But these new, fine, heartless- 
looking, showy churches, neither one thing nor the other, have, 
to our eyes, an appearance of nothing but world] iness and a job. 

We descended into Streatham by the lane leading to the White 
Lion ; the which noble beast, regardant, looked at us up the 
narrow passage, as if intending to dispute rather than invite our 
approach to the castle of his hospitable proprietor. On going 
nearer,, we found that the grimness of his aspect was purely in 



240 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

our imaginations, the said lordly animal having, in fact, a coun- 
tenance singularly humane, and very like a gentleman we knew 
once of the name of Collins. 

It not being within our plan to accept Collins's invitation, we 
turned to the left, and proceeded down the village, thinking of 
Dr. Johnson. Seeing, however, an aged landlord at the door, 
we stepped back to ask him if he remembered the Doctor. He 
knew nothing of him, nor even of Mr. Thrale, having come late, 
he said, to those parts. Resuming our way, we saw, at the end 
of the village, a decent-looking old man, with a sharp eye and 
a hale countenance, who, with an easy, self-satisfied air, as if 
he had worked enough in his time and was no longer under the 
necessity of over-troubling himself, sat indolently cracking stones 
in the road. We asked him if he knew Dr. Johnson ; and he 
said, with a jerk-up of his eye, " Oh yes ; — I knew him well 
enough." Seating myself on one side of his trench of stones, I 
proceeded to have that matter out with Master Whatman (for 
such was the name of my informant). His information did not 
amount to much, but it contained one or two points which I do 
not remember to have met with, and every addition to our 
knowledge of such a man is valuable. Nobody will think it 
more so than yourself, who will certainly yearn over this part 
of my letter, and make much of it. The following is the sum 
total of what was related : — Johnson, he said, wore a silk waist- 
coat embroidered with silver, and all over snuff. The snuff he 
carried loose in his waistcoat pocket, and would take a handful 
of it out with one hand, and help himself to it with the other. 
He would sometimes have his dinner brought out to him in the 
park, and set on the ground ; and while he was waiting for it, 
would lie idly, and cut the grass with a knife. His manners 
were very good-natured, and sometimes so childish, that people 
would have taken him for " an idiot, like." His voice was 
"low." — "Do you mean low in a gruff sense ?" — "No : it was 
rather feminine." — "Then, perhaps, in one sense of the word, 
it was high V — "Yes, it was." — " And gentle V — " Yes, very 
gentle P" — (This, of course, was to people in general, and to the 
villagers. When he dogmatised, it became what Lord Pem- 
broke called a " bow-wow." The late Mr. Fuseli told us the 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 241 

same thing of Johnson's voice ; we mean, that it was " high," 
in contradistinction to a bass voice). To proceed with our vil- 
lage historian. Our informant recurred several times to the 
childish manners of Johnson, saying that he often appeared 
"quite simple," — " just like a child," — "almost foolish, like." 
When he walked, he always seemed in a hurry. His walk was 
"between a run and a shuffle." Master Whatman was here 
painting a good portrait. I have often suspected that the best 
likeness of Johnson was a whole-length engraving of him, walk- 
ing in Scotland, with that joke of his underneath, about the 
stick that he lost in the isle of Mull. Boswell told him the 
stick would be returned. " No, sir," replied he ; " consider the 
value of such a piece of timber here" The manner of his walk 
in the picture is precisely that described by the villager. What- 
man concluded, by giving his opinion of Mrs. Thrale, which he 
did in exactly the following words : — " She gathered a good deal 
of knowledge from him, but does not seem to have turned it to 
much account." Wherever you now go about the country, you 
recognize the effects of that " Twopenny Trash," which the il- 
liberal affect to hold in such contempt, and are really so afraid 
of. They have reason; for people now canvass their preten- 
sions in good set terms, who would have said nothing but " Anan /" 
to a question thirty years back. Not that Mr. Whatman dis- 
cussed politics with us. Let no magnanimous Quarterly Re- 
viewer try to get him turned out of a place on that score. We 
are speaking of the peasantry at large, and then, not merely of 
politics, but of questions of all sorts interesting to humanity ; 
which the very clowns now discuss by the road-side, to an ex- 
tent at which their former leaders would not dare to discuss 
them. This is one reason, among others, why knowledge must 
go on victoriously. A real zeal for the truth can discuss any- 
thing ; slavery can only go the length of its chain. 

In quitting Streatham, we met a lady on horseback, accompa- 
nied by three curs and a footman, which a milkman facetiously 
termed a footman, and " three outriders." Entering Mitcham by 
the green where they play at cricket, we noticed a pretty, mode- 
rate-sized house, with the largest geraniums growing on each side 
the door that we ever beheld in that situation. Mitcham reminded 
17 



242 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

me of its neighbor, Merton, and of the days of my childhood ; 
but we could not go out of our way to see it. There was the 
little river Wandle, however, turning a mill, and flowing between 
flowery meadows. The mill was that of a copper manufactory, 
at which the people work night as well as day, one half taking 
the duties alternately. The reason given for this is, that by 
night, the river not being interrupted by other demands upon it, 
works to better advantage. The epithet of " flowery " applied 
to the district, is no poetical licence. In the fields about Mitcham 
they cultivate herbs for the apothecaries ; so that in the height 
of the season, you walk as in the Elysian fields, 

" In yellow meads of asphodel, 
And amaranthine bowers." 

Apothecaries' Hall, I understand, is entirely supplied with this 
poetical part of medicine from some acres of ground belonging 
to Major Moor. A beautiful bed of poppies, as we entered Mor- 
den, glowed in the setting sun, like the dreams of Titian. It 
looked like a bed for Proserpina — a glow of melancholy beauty, 
containing a joy perhaps beyond joy. Poppies, with their dark 
ruby cups and crowned heads, the more than wine color of their 
sleepy silk, and the funeral look of their anthers, seem to have 
a meaning about them beyond other flowers. They look as if 
they held a mystery at their hearts, like sleeping kings of Lethe. 
The church of Mitcham has been rebuilt, if I recollect right- 
ly, but in the proper old style. Morden has a good old church, 
which tempted us to look into the church-yard ; but a rich man 
who lives near it, and who did not choose his house to be ap- 
proached on that side, had locked up the gate, so that there was 
no path through it, except on Sundays. Can this be a lawful 
exercise of power ? If people have a right to call any path their 
own, I should think it must be that which leads to the graves of 
their fathers and mothers ; and next to their right, such a path 
is the right of the traveller. The traveller may be in some mea- 
sure regarded as a representative of wandering humanity. He 
claims relationship with all whom he finds attached to a place in 
idea. He and the dead are at once in a place, and apart from 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 243 

it. Setting aside this remoter sentiment, it is surely an incon- 
siderate thing in any man to shut up a church-yard from the vil- 
lagers ; and should these pages meet the eye of the person in 
question, he is recommended to think better of it. Possibly I 
may not know the whole of the case, and on that account, though 
not that only, I mention no names ; for the inhabitant with whom 
I talked on the subject, and who regarded it in the same light, 
added, with a candor becoming his objections, that " the gentle- 
man was a very good-natured gentleman,* too, and kind to the 
poor." How his act of power squares with his kindness, I do 
not know. Very good-natured people are sometimes very fond of 
having their own way ; but this is a mode of indulging it, which 
a truly generous person, I should think, will, on reflection, be 
glad to give up. Such a man, I am sure, can afford to concede 
a point, where others, who do not deserve the character, will try 
hard to retain every little proof of their importance. 

On the steps of the George Inn, at Morden, the rustic inn of a 
hamlet, stood a personage much grimmer than the White Lion of 
Streatham • looking, in fact, with his fiery eyes, his beak, and 
his old mouth and chin, very like the cock, or " grim leoun," of 
Chaucer. He was tall and thin, with a flapped hat over his 
eyes, and appeared as sulky and dissatisfied as if he had quar- 
relled with the whole world, the exciseman in particular. We 
asked him if he could let us have some tea. He said, " Yes, he 
believed so ;" and pointed with an indifferent, or rather hostile 
air, to a room at the side, which we entered. A buxom good-na- 
tured girl, with a squint, that was bewitching after the moral de- 
formity of our friend's visage, served us up tea ; and " tea, sir," 
as Johnson might have said, " inspires placidity." The room was 
adorned with some engravings after Smirke, the subjects out of 
Shakspeare, which never look so well, I think, as when thus en- 
countered on a journey. Shakspeare is in the highway of life, 
with exquisite side-touches of the remoteness of the poet ; and 
nobody links all kindly together as he does. 

We afterwards found in conversing with the villager above- 
mentioned, that our host of the George had got rich, and was pre- 
paring to quit for a new house he had built, in which he meant 
to turn gentleman farmer. Habit made him dislike to go ; pride 



244 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

and his wife (who vowed she would go whether he did or not) 
rendered him unable to stay ; and so between his grudging the 
new-comer and the old rib, he was in as pretty a state of irrita- 
bility as any successful non-succeeder need be. People had been 
galling him all day, I suppose, with showing how many pots of 
ale would be drunk under the new tenant ; and our arrival 
crowned the measure of his receipts and his wretchedness, by 
intimating that " gentlefolks " intended to come to tea. —Adieu, 
till next week. 

We left Morden after tea, and proceeded on our road for Ep- 
som. The landscape continued flat but luxuriant. You are sure, 
I believe, of trees in Surrey, except on the downs ; and they are 
surrounded with wood, and often have beautiful clumps of it. 
The sun began to set a little after we had got beyond the Post- 
house ; and was the largest I remember to have seen. It looked 
through hedges of elms and wild roses ; the mowers were going 
home ; and by degrees the landscape was bathed in a balmy twi- 
light. Patient and placid thought succeeded. It was an hour, 
and a scene, in which one would suppose that the weariest-laden 
pilgrim must feel his burden easier. 

About a mile from Ewell a post-chaise overtook and passed us, 
the driver of which was seated, and had taken up an eleemosy- 
nary girl to sit with him. Postilions run along a road, conscious 
of a pretty power in that way, and able to select some fair one, 
to whom they gallantly make a present of a ride. Not having a 
fare of one sort, they make it up to themselves by taking another. 
You may be pretty sure on these occasions, that there is nobody 
" hid in their vacant interlunar " chaise. So taking pity on my 
companions (for after I am once tired, I seem as if I could go on, 
tired for ever), I started and ran after the charioteer. Some 
good-natured peasants (they all appear such in this county) aided 
the shouts which I sent after him. He stopped ; and the gallan- 
try on both sides was rewarded by the addition of two females to 
his vehicle. We were soon through Ewell, a pretty neat-looking 
place with a proper old church, and a handsome house opposite, 
new but in the old style. The church has trees by it, and there 
was a moon over them. — At Ewell was born the facetious Bishop 
Corbet, who when a bald man was brought before him to be con- 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 245 

firmed, said to his assistant, " Some dust, Lushington :" — (to keep 
his hand from slipping.) 

The night air struck cold on passing Ewell ; and for the first 
time there was an appearance of a bleak and barren country to 
the left. This was Epsom Downs. They are the same as the 
Banstead and Leatherhead downs, the name varying with the 
neighborhood. You remember Banstead mutton ? 

" To Hounslow-heath I point, and Banstead down ; 
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own." 

Pope seems to have lifted up his delicate nose at Twickenham, 
and scented his dinner a dozen miles off. 

At Epsom we supped and slept; and finding the inn comforta- 
ble, and having some work to do, we stopped there a day or two. 
Do you not like those solid, wainscotted rooms in old houses, with 
seats in the windows, and no pretension but to comfort ? They 
please me exceedingly. Their merits are complete, if the houses 
are wide and low, and situate in a spot at once woody and dry. 
Wood is not to be expected in a high street ; but the house (the 
King's Head) was of this description ; and Epsom itself is in a 
nest of trees. Next morning, on looking out of window, we found 
ourselves in a proper country town, remarkably neat, the houses 
not old enough to be ruinous, nor yet to have been exchanged for 
new ones of a London character. Opposite us was the watch- 
house with the market-clock, and a pond which is said to contain 
gold and silver fish. How those delicate little creatures came to 
inhabit a pond in the middle of a town I cannot say. One fancies 
they must have been put in by the fantastic hand of some fine 
lady in the days of Charles the Second ; for this part of the coun- 
try is eminent in the annals of gaiety. Charles used to come to 
the races here ; the palace of Nonesuch, which he gave to Lady 
Castlemain, is a few miles off; and here he visited the gentry in 
the neighborhood. At Ashted Park, close by, and still in posses- 
sion of inheritors of the name of Howard by marriage, he visit- 
ed Sir Robert Howard, the brother-in-law of Dryden, who pro- 
bably used to come there also. They preserved there till not 
loner ago the table at which the kino; dined. 

This Ashted is a lively spot, — both park and village. The vil- 



246 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

lage, or rather hamlet, is on the road to Leatherhead \ so indeed 
is the park ; but the mansion is out of sight ; and near the man- 
sion, and in the very thick of the park and the trees, with the 
deer running about it, is the village church, small, old, and pic- 
turesque,- — a little stone tower ; and the churchyard, of propor- 
tionate dimensions, is beside it. When I first saw it, looking with 
its pointed windows through the trees, the surprise was beautiful. 
The inside disappoints you, not because it is so small, but because 
the accommodations and the look of them are so homely. The 
wood of the pews resembles that of an old kitchen dresser in 
color ; the lord of the manor's being not a whit better than the 
rest. This is in good taste, considering the rest ; and Col. How- 
ard, who has the reputation of being a liberal man, probably 
keeps the church just as he found it, without thinking about the 
matter. At any rate, he does not exalt himself, in a Christian 
assembly, at the expense of his neighbors. But loving old 
churches as I do, and looking forward to a time when a Christi- 
anity still more worthy of the name shall be preached in them, 
I could not help wishing that the inside were more worthy of the 
out. A coat of shining walnut, a painting at one end, and a small 
organ with its dark wood and its golden-looking pipes at the other, 
would make, at no great expense to a wealthy man, a jewel of 
an interior, worthy of the lovely spot in which the church is sit- 
uate. One cannot help desiring something of this kind the more, 
on account of what has been done for other village-churches in 
the neighborhood, which I shall presently notice. Epsom church, 
I believe, is among them ; the outside unquestionably (I have not 
seen the interior) ; and a spire has been added, which makes a 
pretty addition to the scenery. The only ornaments of Ashted 
church, besides two or three monuments of the Howards, are the 
family 'scutcheon, and that of his Sacred Majesty Charles the 
Second ; which I suppose was put up at the time of his restora- 
tion or his visit, and has remained ever since, the lion still look- 
ing lively and threatening. One imagines the court coming to 
church, and the whole place filled with perukes and courtiers, 
with love-locks and rustling silks. Sir Robert is in a state of ex- 
altation. Dryden stands near him, observant. Charles composes 
his face to the sermon, upon which Buckingham and Sedley are 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 247 

cracking almost unbearable jokes behind their gloves ; and the 
poor village maidens, gaping alternately at his Majesty's sacred 
visage and the profane beauty of the Countess of Castlemain, 
and then losing their eyes among " a power " of cavaliers, " the 
handsomest men as ever was," are in a way to bring the hearts, 
thumping in their boddices, to a fine market. I wonder how 
many descendants there are of earls and marquises living this 
minute at Epsom ! How much noble blood ignobly occupied with 
dairies and ploughs, and looking gules in the cheeks of bump- 
kins, 

Ashted Park has some fine walnut-trees (Surrey is the great 
garden of walnuts) and one of the noblest limes I ever saw. The 
park is well kept, has a pretty lodge and game-keeper's house, 
with roses at the doors ; and a farm cottage where the " gentle- 
folks n may play at rustics. A lady of quality, in a boddice, 
gives one somehow a pretty notion ; especially if she has a heart 
high enough really to sympathize with humility. A late Earl 
of Exeter lived unknown for some time in a village, under the 
name of Jones (was not that a good name to select ?) and married 
a country girl, whom he took to Burleigh House, and then for the 
first time told her that she was the mistress of it and a Countess ! 
This is a romance of real life which has been deservedly envied. 
If I, instead of being a shattered student, an old intellectual 
soldier, " not worth a lady's eye," and forced to compose his 
frame to abide the biddings of his resolution, were a young fellow 
in the bloom of life, and equally clever and penniless, I cannot 
imagine a fortune of which I should be prGuder, and which would 
give me right to take a manlier aspect in the eyes of love, than 
to owe everything I had in the world, down to my very shoe- 
strings, to a woman who should have played over the same story 
with me, the sexes being reversed ; who should say, " You took 
me for a cottager, and I am a Countess ; and this is the only 
deception you will ever have to forgive me." What a pleasure 
to strive after daily excellence, in order to show one^s gratitude 
to such a woman ) to fight for her ; to suffer for her ; to wear 
her name like a priceless jewel ; to hold her hand in long sick- 
ness, and look in her face when it had lost its beauty ; to say, 
questioning, " You know how I love you ?" and for her to answer 



248 THE COMPANION. [chap xiv. 

with such a face of truth, that nothing but exceeding health 
could hinder one from being faint with adoring her. Alas ! why- 
are not all hearts that are capable of love, rich in the knowledge 
how to show it; which would supersede the necessity of other 
riches ? Or, indeed, are not all hearts which are truly so ca- 
pable, gifted with the riches by the capacity ? 

Forgive me this dream under the walnut-trees of Ashted 
Park ; and let us return to the colder loves of the age of Charles 
the Second. I thought to give you a picture of Epsom, by turning 
to Shadwell's comedy of Epsom Wells ; but it contains nothing 
of any sort except a sketch of a wittol or two, though Sedley is 
said to have helped him in it, and though (probably on that 
account) it was very successful. 

Pepys, however, will supply us with a scene or two :- — 

" 26th, Lord's-day. — Up and to the Wells, where a great store 
of citizens, which was the greatest part of the company, though 
there were some others of better quality. Thence I walked to 
Mr. Minnes's house, and thence to Durdan's, and walked within 
the court-yard, &c, to the bowling-green, where I have seen so 
much mirth in my time ; but now no family in it (my Lord 
Barkeley, whose it is, being with his family at London). Then 
rode through Epsom, the whole town over, seeing the various 
companies that were there walking ; which is very pleasant, 
seeing how they are without knowing what to do, but only in the 
morning to drink waters. But Lord ! to see how many I met 
there of citizens, that I could not have thought to have seen 
there ; that they had ever had it in their heads or purses to go 
down there. We went through Nonesuch Park to the house, 
and there viewed as much as we could of the outside, and looked 
through the great gates, and found a noble court : and altogether 
believe it to have been a very noble house, and a delicate parke 
about it, where just now there was a doe killed for the king, to 
carry up to court." — Vol. i., p. 241. 

If the sign of the King's Head at Epsom is still where it used 
to be, it appears, from another passage, that we had merry ghosts 
next door to us. 

" 14th. — To Epsom, by eight o'clock to the Well, where much 
company. And to the town, to King's Head : and hear that my 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 249 

Lord Buckhurst and Nelly are lodged at the next house, and Sir 
Charles Sedley with them ; and keep a merry house. Poor girl ! 
I pity her ; but more the loss of her at the king's house. Here 
Tom Wilson came to me, and sat and talked an hour ; and I 
perceive he hath been much acquainted with Dr. Fuller (Tom), 
and Dr. Pierson, and several of the great cavalier persons during 
the late troubles ; and I was glad to hear him talk of them, 
which he did very ingenuously, and very much of Dr. Fuller's 
art of memory, which he did tell me several instances of. By 
and bye he parted, and I talked with two women that farmed the 
well at £12 per annum, of the lord of the manor. Mr. Evelyn, 
with his lady, and also my Lord George Barkeley's lady, and 
their fine daughter, that the King of France liked so well, and 
did dance so rich in jewels before the King, at the ball I was at, 
at our court last winter, and also their son, a knight of the Bath, 
were at church this morning. I walked upon the Downs, where 
a flock of sheep was ; the most pleasant and innocent sight that 
ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd, and his little boy, 
reading, free from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to 
him ; and we took notice of his knit woollen stockings, of two 
colors mixed." — Vol. ii., p. 92. 

This place was still in high condition at the beginning of the 
next century, as appears from Toland's account of it, quoted in 
the History of Epsom, by an Inhabitant. After a " flowery," as 
the writer justly calls it, but perhaps not undeserved account of 
the pleasures of the place, outside as well as in, he says — 

" The two rival bowling-greens are not to be forgotten, on 
which all the company, after diverting themselves, in the morning, 
according to their fancies, make a gallant appearance every 
evening, especially on the Saturday and Monday. Here are also 
raffling-tables, with music playing most of the day ; and the 
nights are generally crowned with dancing. All new-comers 
are awakened out of their sleep the first morning, by the same 
music, which goes to welcome them to Epsom. 

" You would think yourself in some enchanted camp,, to see 
the peasants ride to every house, with choicest fruits, herbs, and 
flowers : with all sorts of tame and wild fowl ; the rarest fish and 



250 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

venison ; and with every kind of butcher's meat, among which 
the Banstead Down mutton is the most relishing dainty. 

" Thus to see the fresh and artless damsels of the plain, either 
accompanied by their amorous swains or aged parents, striking 
their bargains with the nice court and city ladies, who, like 
queens in a tragedy, display all their finery on benches before 
their doors (where they hourly censure and are censured) ; and 
to observe how the handsomest of each degree equally admire, 
envy, and cozen one another, is to me one of the chief amuse- 
ments of the place. 

" The ladies who are too lazy or stately, but especially those 
who sit up late at cards, have their provisions brought to their 
bed-side, where they conclude the bargain with the higler ; and 
then (perhaps after a dish of chocolate) take another nap until 
what they have thus purchased is prepared for dinner. 

" Within a mile and a half of Epsom, is the place, and only 
the place, where the splendid mansion of Nonesuch lately stood. 
A great part of it, however, stood in my own time, and I have 
spoken with those who saw it entire. 

" But not to quit our Downs for any court, the great number 
of gentlemen and ladies that take the air every morning and 
evening on horse-back, and that range, either singly or in sepa- 
rate companies, over every hill and dale, is a most entertaining 
object. 

"But whether you gently wander over my favorite meadows, 
planted on all sides quite to Woodcote Seat (in whose long grove 
I oftenest converse with myself) ; or walk further on to Ashted 
house and park ; or ride still farther to Box-hill, that enchanting 
temple of Nature : or whether you lose yourself in the aged 
yew-groves of Mickleham, or try your patience in angling for 
trout about Leatherhead ; whether you go to some cricket-match, 
and other sports of contending villagers, or choose to breathe your 
horse at a race, and to follow a pack of hounds at the proper 
season : whether, I say, you delight in anyone or every of these, 
Epsom is the place you must like before all others." 

Congreve has a letter addressed " to Mrs. Hunt at Epsom." 
This was Arabella Hunt, the lady to whom he addressed an ode 
on her singing, and with whom he appears to have been in love. 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 251 

Epsom has still its races ; but the Wells (not far from Ashted 
Park), though retaining their property, and giving a name to a 
medicine, have long been out of fashion. Individuals, however, 
I believe, still resort to them. Their site is occupied by a farm- 
house, in which lodgings are to be had. Close to Ashted Park 
is that of Lord Woodcote, formerly the residence of the notorious 
Lord Baltimore, the last man of quality in England who had a 
taste for abduction. Of late, our aspirants after figure and 
fortune seem to have been ambitious of restoring the practice 
from Ireland. It is their mode of conducting the business of 
life. Abduction, they think, " must be attended to." 

From Woodcote Green, a pretty sequestered spot, between this 
park and the town, rooks are said to have been first taken to the 
Temple Gardens, by Sir William Northey, secretary to Queen 
Anne. How heightened is the pleasure given you by the con- 
templation of a beautiful spot, when you think it has been the 
means of conferring good elsewhere ! I would rather live near 
a rookery, which had sent out a dozen colonies, than have the 
solitary idea of them complete. In the solitude you crave after 
human good ; and here a piece of it, however cheap in the eyes 
of the scornful, has been conferred ; for Sir William's colony 
flourish, it seems, in the smoke of London. Rooks always ap- 
peared to me the clergymen among birds ; grave, black-coated, 
sententious ; with an eye to a snug sylvan abode, and plenty of 
tithes. Their clerkly character is now mixed up in my ima- 
gination with something of the lawyer. They and the lawyer's 
" studious bowers," as Spenser calls the Temple, appear to suit 
one another. Did you ever notice, by the way, what a soft and 
pleasant sound there is in the voices of the young rooks — a sort 
of kindly chuckle, like that of an infant being fed ? 

At Woodcote Green is Durdans, the seat mentioned in Pepys 
as belonging to Lord Berkeley, now the residence of Sir Gilbert 
Heathcote, and said to have been built (with several other man- 
sions) of the materials of Nonesuch, when that palace was pulled 
\Iown. It is one of those solid country houses, wider than tall, 
and of shining brick-work, that retain at once a look of age and 
newness ; promise well for domestic comfort ; and suit a good 
substantial garden. In coming upon it suddenly, and looking 



252 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. > 

at it through the great iron gates and across a round plat of 
grass and flowers, it seems a personification of the solid country 
squire himself, not without elegance, sitting under his trees. 
When I looked at it, and thought of the time of diaries II., I 
could not help fancying that it must have belonged to the " Dame 
Durden " of the old glee, who had such a loving household. 

There is a beautiful walk from Woodcote Green to Ashted, 
through the park, and then (crossing the road) through the fields 
and woody lanes to Leatherhead ; but in going, we went by the 
road. As we were leaving Epsom, a girl was calling the bees 
to swarm, with a brass pan. Larks accompanied us all the 
way. The fields were full of clover ; there was an air on our 
faces, the day being at once fine and gently clouded ; and in 
passing through a lovely country, we were conscious of going to 
a lovelier. 

At Leatherhead begin the first local evidences of hill and val- 
ley, with which the country is now enriched. The modern way 
of spelling the name of this town renders it a misnomer and a 
dishonor, and has been justly resented by the antiquarian taste 
of Mr. Dallaway the vicar, who makes it a point, they say, to 
restore the old spelling, Lethered. I believe he supposed it to 
come anagramatically from the Saxon name Ethelred ; a thing 
not at all improbable, transformations of that sort having 
been common in old times. (See the annotations on Chaucer 
and Redi.) An Ethelred perhaps had a seat at this place. 
Epsom, formerly written Ebsham and Ebbensham (Fuller so 
writes it), is said to have been named from Ebba, a Saxon prin- 
cess, who had a palace there. Ebba, I suppose, is the same as 
Emma, cum gratia Mathews. 

Leatherhead, like all the towns that let lodgings during the 
races, is kept very neat and nice ; and though not quite so 
woody as Epsom, is in a beautiful country, and has to boast of 
the river Mole. It has also a more venerable church. Mr. 
Dallaway, like a proper antiquary, has refreshed the interior, 
without spoiling it. Over the main pew is preserved, together 
with his helmet, an inscription in old English letters, to the memory 
of" friendly Robert Gardner," chief Sergeant of the " Seller" 
in the year 1571. This was in the time of Elizabeth. A jovial 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 253 



successor of his is also recorded, to wit, " Richard Dalton, Esq., 
Serjeant of the Wine Cellar to King Charles II." But it is on 
the memory of the other sex that Leatherhead church ought to 
pride itself. Here are buried three sister Beauclercs, daughters 
of Lord Henry Beauclerc, who appear to have been three quiet, 
benevolent old maids, who followed one another quietly to the 
grave, and had lived, doubtless, the admiration rather than the 
envy of the village damsels. Here also lies Miss Cholmon- 
deley, another old maid, but merry withal, and the delight of all 
that knew her, who, by one of those frightful accidents that sud- 
denly knock people's souls out, and seem more frightful when 
they cut short the career of the good-natured, was killed on the 
spot, at the entrance of this village, by the overturning of the 
Princess Charlotte's coach, whom she was accompanying on a 
visit to Norbury Park. A most affectionate epitaph, honorable 
to all parties, and recording her special attachment to her mar- 
ried sister, is inscribed to her memory by her brother-in-law, 
Sir William Bellingham, I think. But above all, " Here lies 
all that is mortal " (to use the words of the tombstone) •' of Mrs. 
Elizabeth Rolfe," of Dover, in Kent, who departed this life in 
the sixty-seventh year of her age, and was " interred by her own 
desire at the side of her beloved Cousin, Benefactress, and 
Friend, Lady Catharine Thompson, with whom she buried all 
worldly happiness. This temporary separation," continues the 
epitaph, " no engagements, no pursuits, could render less bitter 
to the disconsolate Mrs. Rolfe, who from the hour she lost her 
other self knew no pleasure but in the hopes she cherished (on 
which point her eyes were ever fixed) of joining her friend in 
the region of unfading Felicity. Blessed with the Power and 
Will to succor the distressed, she exercised both ; and in these 
exercises only found a Ray of Happiness. Let the Ridiculers 
of Female Friendship read this honest Inscription, which disdains 
to flatter." — A record in another part informs us, that Mrs. Rolfe 
gave the parish the interest of £400 annually in memory of the 
above, so long as the parish preserves the marble that announces 
the gift, and the stone that covers her grave. Talking with the 
parish-clerk, who was otherwise a right and seemly parish-clerk, 
elderly and withered, with a proper brown wig, he affected, like 



254 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

a man of this world, to speak in disparagement of the phrase 
" her other self," which somebody had taught him to consider 
romantic, and an exaggeration. This was being a little too 
much of " the earth, earthy. 55 The famous parish-clerk of St. 
Andrews, one of the great professors of humanity in the times of 
the Deckars and Shakspeares, would have talked in a different 
strain. There is some more of the epitaph, recommencing in a 
style somewhat " to seek, 55 and after the meditative Burleigh 
fashion, in the Critic ; but this does not hinder the rest from 
being true, or Mrs. Roife and my lady Thompson from being two 
genuine human beings, and among the salt of the earth. There 
is more friendship and virtue in the world than the world has 
yet got wisdom enough to know and be proud of; and few things 
would please me better than to travel all over England, and 
fetch out the records of it. 

I must not omit to mention that Elinor Rummyn, illustrious in 
the tap-room pages of " Skelton, Laureate,' 5 kept a house in this 
village ; and that Mr. Dallaway has emblazoned the fact, for 
the benefit of antiquarian travellers, in the shape of her portrait, 
with an inscription upon it. The house is the Running Horse, 
near the bridge. 

The luxury of the country now increases at every step towards 
Dorking, which is five miles from Leatherhead. You walk 
through a valley with hills on one side and wood all about ; and 
on your right hand is the Mole, running through fields and flow- 
ery hedges. These hills are the turfy downs of Norbury Park, 
the gate of which you soon arrive at. It is modern, but in good 
retrospective taste, and stands out into the road with one of those 
round overhanging turrets, which seem held forth by the old 
hand of hospitality. A little beyond, you arrive at the lovely 
village of Mickleham, small, sylvan, and embowered, with a 
little fat church (for the epithet comes involuntarily at the sight 
of it), as short and plump as the fattest of its vicars may have 
been, with a disproportionate bit of a spire on the top, as if he 
had put on an extinguisher instead of a hat. The inside has 
been renewed in the proper taste as though Mr. Dallaway had 
had a hand in it ; and there is an organ, which is more than 
Leatherhead can boast. The organist is the son of the parish- 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 255 

clerk ; and when I asked his sister, a modest, agreeable-look- 
ing girl, who showed us the church, whether he could not favor 
us with a voluntary, she told me he was making hay ! What 
do you say to that ? I think this is a piece of Germanism 
for you. Her father was a day-laborer, like the son, and had 
become organist before him, out of a natural love of music. I had 
fetched the girl from her tea. A decent-looking young man was 
in the room with her ; the door was open, exhibiting the homely 
comforts inside ; a cat slept before it, on the cover of the garden 
wall ; and there was plenty of herbs and flowers, presenting 
altogether the appearance of a cottage nest. I will be bound 
that their musical refinements are a great help to the enjoyment 
of all this ; and that a general lift in their tastes, instead of dis- 
satisfying the poor, would have a reverse effect, by increasing the 
sum of their resources. It would, indeed, not help to blind them 
to whatever they might have reason to ask or to complain of. 
Why should it ? But it would refine them there also, and ena- 
ble them to obtain it more happily, through the means of the dif- 
fusion of knowledge on all sides. 

The mansion of Norbury Park, formerly the seat of Mr. Locke, 
who appears to have had a deserved reputation for taste in the 
fine arts (his daughter married an Angerstein), is situate on a 
noble elevation upon the right of the village of Mickleham. Be- 
tween the grounds and the road, are glorious slopes and mea- 
dows, superabundant in wood, and pierced by the river Mole. 
In coming back we turned up a path into them, to look at a 
farm that was to be let. It belongs to a gentleman, celebrated 
in the neighborhood, and we believe elsewhere, for his powers 
of" conversation ;" but this we did not know at the time. He 
was absent, and had left his farm in the hands of his steward, to 
be let for a certain time. The house was a cottage, and fur- 
nished as becomes a cottage ; but one room we thought would 
make a delicious study. Probably it is one ; for there were 
books and an easy-chair in it. The window looked upon a 
close bit of lawn, shut in with trees ; and round the walls hung 
a set of prints from Raphael. This looked as if the possessor 
had something to say for himself. 

We were now in the bosom of the scenery for which this part 



255 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

of the country is celebrated. Between Mickleham and Dorking, 
on the left, is the famous Box Hill, so called from the trees that 
grow on it. Part of it presents great bald pieces of chalk ; but 
on the side of Mickleham it has one truly noble aspect, a " ver- 
durous wall," which looks the higher for its being precipitous, 
and from its having somebody's house at the foot of it — a white 
little mansion in a world of green. Otherwise, the size of this 
hill disappointed us. The river Mole runs at the foot of it. 
This river, so called from taking part of its course under ground, 
does not plunge into the earth at once as most people suppose. 
So at least Dr. Aikin informs us, for I did not look into the mat- 
ter myself. He says it loses itself in the ground at various 
points about the neighborhood, and rises again on the road to 
Leatherhead. I protest against its being called " sullen," in 
spite of what the poets have been pleased to call it for hiding 
itself. It is a good and gentle stream, flowing through luxuriant 
banks, and clear enough where the soil is gravelly. It hides, 
just as the nymph might hide ; and Drayton gives it a good 
character, if I remember. Unfortunately I have him not by me. 
The town of Dorking disappointed us, especially one of us, 
who was a good deal there when a child, and who found new 
London-looking houses started up in the place of old friends. 
The people also appeared not so pleasant as their countrymen in 
general, nor so healthy. There are more King's and Duke's 
Heads in the neighborhood ; signs, which doubtless came in with 
the Restoration. The Leg of Mutton is the favorite hieroglyphic 
about the Downs. Dorking is famous for a breed of fowls with 
six toes. I do not know whether they have any faculty at 
counting their grain. We did not see Leith Hill, which is the 
great station for a prospect hereabouts, and upon which Dennis 
the critic made a lumbering attempt to be lively. You may see 
it in the two volumes of letters belonging to N. He " blunders 
round about a meaning," and endeavors to act the part of an 
inspired Cicerone, with oratorical "flashes in the pan." One or 
two of his attempts to convey a particular impression are very 
ludicrous. Just as you think you are going to catch an idea, 
they slide off into hopeless generality. Such at least is my im- 
pression from what I remember. I regret that I could not meet 



chap, xiv.] A WALK FROM DULWICH TO BROCKHAM. 257 

at Epsom or Leatherhead with a Dorking Guide, which has been 
lately published, and which, I believe, is a work of merit. In 
the town itself I had not time to think of it ; otherwise I might 
have had some better information to give you regarding spots in 
the neighborhood, and persons who have added to their interest. 

One of these, however, I know. Turning off to the left for 
Brockham, we had to go through Betchworth Park, formerly the 
seat of Abraham Tucker, one of the most amiable and truth- 
loving of philosophers. Mr. Hazlitt made an abridgment of his 
principal work ; but original and abridgment are both out of 
print. The latter, I should think, would sell now, when the 
public begin to be tired of the eternal jangling and insincerity of 
criticism, and would fain hear what an honest observer has to 
say. It would only require to be well advertised, not puffed ; 
for purring, thank God, besides being a very unfit announcer of 
truth, has well-nigh cracked its cheeks. 

Betchworth Castle is now in the possession of Mr. Barclay the 
brewer, a descendant, if I mistake not, of the famous Barclay of 
Urie, the Apologist of the Quakers. If this gentleman, is the 
same as the one mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson, he is by 
nature as well as descent worthy of occupying the abode of a 
wise man. Or if he is not, why shouldn't he be worthy after his 
fashion ? You remember the urbane old book- worm, who, con- 
versing with a young gentleman, more remarkable for gentility 
than beauty, and understanding for the first time that he had 
sisters, said, in a transport of the gratuitous, " Doubtless very 
charming young ladies, sir." I will not take it for granted that 
all the Barclays are. philosophers ; but something of a superiority 
to the vulgar, either in talents or the love of them, may be more 
reasonably expected in this kind of hereditary rank than the 
common one. 

"V\ th Mr. Tucker and his chestnut groves I will conclude, 
having, in fact, nothing to say of Brockham, except that it was 
the boundary of our walk. Yes ; I have one thing, and a plea- 
sant one ; which is, that I met there by chance, with the younger 
brother of a family whom I had known in my childhood, and 
who are eminent to this day for a certain mixture of religion and 
joviality, equally uncommon and good-hearted. May old and 
* 18 



258 THE COMPANION. [chap. xiv. 

young continue not to know which shall live the longest. I do 
not mean religion or joviality ! but both in their shape. 

Believe me, dear sir, very truly yours. — Mine is not so novel 
or luxurious a journey as the one you treated us with the other 
day :* which I mention, because one journey always makes me 
long for another ; and I hope not many years will pass over 
your head before you give us a second Ramble, in which I may 
see Italy once again, and hear with more accomplished ears the 
sound of her music. 

* See " A Ramble among the Musicians in Germany," a work full of gusto. 



THE END. 



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